Govt improves online Covid vaccination scheduling
"We are happy to announce that we have reprogrammed the system to allow for self-scheduling."
The government’s Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) now allows users to schedule where and when they can get vaccinated for Covid-19.
“One of the things we’ve been getting complaints about is the automated scheduling process, which at times was allocating people to sites that were costly for them to access or in places they didn’t know about,” said acting health minister Health Mmamoloko Kubayi.
Kubayi made the remarks during a media briefing on Friday.
“In this regard, we are happy to announce that we have reprogrammed the system to allow for self-scheduling.”
This meant that anyone who was registered could choose a vaccination site where the individual wanted to be vaccinated.
To further ensure that all sectors were reaching all South Africans, it was working on ensuring that the registration website used all 11 official languages for ease of access.
She said IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Sesotho and Afrikaans had already gone live while “we are still working on others”.
Kubayi said further the inter-ministerial vaccine committee had agreed to the health department’s suggestion to do away with sectoral prioritization.
“The age-based strategy will be our approach going forward,” she said.
“It is more effective and helps us to reach a wider spectrum of South Africans.”
The changes were only some of the measures to be implemented by the national health department to speed up the Covid-19 vaccination process.
“We are putting additional systems in place to ensure that we vaccinate at an even faster rate,” Kubayi said.
She said her sector had agreed with the Solidarity Fund that there should be mass vaccination sites in all metros across the country.
This would cater for the larger population densities in metropolitan municipalities.
Roving vaccination sites, which will move from one community to the next based on demand, will also be implemented.
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She said as vaccinations continued to be administered to the public, the health department was making every effort to streamline the administrative process.
Kubayi encouraged more people eligible for vaccinations, to go out and vaccinate.
“Vaccines, just like any other medication, has side effects. Different individuals will experience these side effects differently, some less severe, some more severe and some say they did not experience any effects.”
The above steps come as the department was worried that recent civil unrest, which saw many people gather at various areas to part take in looting, could lead to another surge.
Kubayi there were disruptions in all areas of the health service delivery system during the height of the unrests.
“There was a drop in the number of vaccinations due to the closure of vaccination sites because of the unrest.”
An estimated 120 private pharmacies were destroyed during which about 47 500 vaccine doses were lost.
Luckily, a large majority of public vaccination sites were not damaged in the process.
While there was minimal disruption to the Gauteng healthcare system, vaccination numbers dropped slightly because people were too afraid to go to vaccination sites due to the unrest.
Millions of people have received #COVID19 vaccine and there have been no long term side effects detected #VaccineRolloutSA pic.twitter.com/y5PKcIzN2s
— National Department of Health (@HealthZA) July 26, 2021
If you have had #COVID19 before, you should still get vaccinated if you are eligible #VacciNation #VaccinateToSaveSouthAfrica #IChooseVaccination #Savelifes pic.twitter.com/S6jJDZq8zg
— National Department of Health (@HealthZA) July 26, 2021
Our vaccination is gathering pace and we are thankful to South Africans who have responded positively to the calls to go out and vaccinate #VaccineRollOutSA #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/Y9sT1GSNRr
— National Department of Health (@HealthZA) July 23, 2021
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