Healthcare workers should get Covid-19 vaccine first, says Glenda Gray

Healthcare workers should be first in line when government starts rolling out the Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa, if we want to ensure those who are most at risk from the virus are protected.

According to the South African Medical Research Council’s chief executive officer (CEO) Professor Glenda Gray, frontline workers, those in the healthcare sector, and those who are most at risk should be first on the list, in line with what other countries such as the US, were already doing.

Protests by US healthcare workers erupted over the weekend, after an algorithm used to register people into the vaccine program failed to prioritise these frontline workers as promised.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s government’s silence on the details of its rollout plan have raised concerns the country was not acting fast enough as a second wave of infections in the country threatened to surpass the first. Government had yet to bring the public into its confidence on an array of logistical and procedural details including how far the vaccine application process was and who would be the first to receive it.

Gray told The Citizen: “It should be the people who get the most side effects from contracting the disease, healthcare professionals, and other frontline workers such as the police. Healthcare workers should be prioritised and then the elderly and then everybody else based on their vulnerability.”

DA spokesperson Siviwe Gwarube said the party agreed with the prioritisation of healthcare workers, and this was among several reasons the party said it was imperative the government divulged its detailed plan for the roll out to make sure that such priorities were met.

“We also have no idea what the prioritisation of the roll out of the vaccine will be, particularly as the government has elected to cover only 10% of the population. The health system’s experience with mass vaccination is the measles vaccination, which reaches about one million children per year. Based on this system capacity, to even reach the 10% mark could take years unless we ramp up the capacity. This is no small task. We therefore need a comprehensive plan as soon as possible.”

Are we moving fast enough to ensure adequate vaccination?

OLIVE BRANCH, MS – DECEMBER 20: Boxes containing the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the McKesson distribution centre in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Picture: Paul Sancya-Pool/Getty Images/AFP

Concerns around how fast the country was moving to procure and plan a distribution line for the vaccine was of equal concern to both Gwarube and Gray.

“Very little detail has been shared on the timeline of the payment and actual procurement of the vaccine. Experts have warned that the transportation, storage and allocation of the vaccine is a complex process. That should be shared transparently with the country,” said Gwarube.

The Department of Health and the Solidarity Fund announced on Tuesday that they have finally made a down payment of $19.2 million (R283 million) to secure the country’s entry into the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) Covax Facility.

The down payment represents 15% of the total cost of securing access to vaccines for 10% (roughly six million) of the population. The country’s membership in the Covax Facility ensures that South Africa receives its equitable share of the vaccine once it becomes available.

READ MORE: SA makes R283m down payment for Covid-19 vaccine

There are three ways the government could get a Covid-19 vaccine into the country, namely via direct procurement with a pharmaceutical company, through the WHO’s Covax programme, which South Africa is a participant of, or through bilateral agreements with other countries, Gray pointed out.

“Canada, for instance has 10 times more of the vaccine than its population needs, so we should be talking to Canada.”

The Covax programme would only provide doses for up to 20% of the population, making it ever more important to act with urgency in procuring doses for South African’s 60 million inhabitants. Parliament raised the alarm on the government’s apparent failure to meet the first payment deadline for the Covax programme, leading to concerns South Africa was headed for more delays in procuring and rolling out the vaccine.

Grey also warned that vaccine licences had to be applied for on time, before the vaccine could legally be used in South Africa.

“We are in a line with other countries so the government can procure it and bring it, but getting the licence for that vaccine is very important,” she said.

Fear and misinformation threatening to derail progress

Misinformation and fear around the vaccine also threatens to incite people to reject the vaccine, with a nursing union believing more awareness needed to be raised to allay fears.

While unions this week agreed on the prioritisation of healthcare workers in the vaccine programme, Cassim Lekhoethe, general secretary for the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa), warned that if the government failed to allay the fears of those who were not convinced of the safety of the vaccines, even some healthcare professionals may rebel against getting the jab.

National Health Education and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) spokesperson Khaya Xaba, however, said his union disagreed with this sentiment, calling for the government to ramp up its education and awareness drive around Covid-19 and the various available vaccines in order to curb the spreading fear around it.

“What we will say is that people need to get better information. Government needs to give us proper information so that we have an informed society,” Xaba said.

Vaccine should still work against new variant

Despite concerns over the validity of the current vaccines after the discovery of a new variant of the vaccine was discovered in the UK and South Africa, Gray believes the vaccines should still be effective.

According to Gray, even with the multiple mutations the virus has gone through, Gray is confident that this does not necessarily mean that the vaccine will be rendered useless, but says the efficacy would have to be monitored.

The vaccine can’t alter your DNA

In this file photo taken on 8 December 2020 a member of staff draws the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine out of a phial at the Southmead Hospital, Bristol. Picture: Graeme Robertson /various sources/AFP

One of the bits of misinformation being spread about Covid-19 vaccines was that the use of messenger RNA vaccines (mRNA) could somehow alter the recipients’ DNA. Perhaps the most prominent case of this was the recent prayer by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.

At least two of the vaccines being rolled out are mRNA vaccines, and are some of the first Covid-19 vaccines authorised for use.

mRNA vaccine technology provides protection in the body by triggering an immune response, explained Grey. They do this by delivering a message to human cells to make a “spike protein” similar to that which is present on the virus, itself.

This prompts immune cells to attack the protein spike, and the body remembers the protein. This allows it to similarly attack viral cells if they do appear in the body.

Once the vaccine has done its job, it is expelled from the body, and Grey stressed that none of the mRNA remained in the body thereafter.

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