Hitting its stride after a faltering start, South Africa's mass vaccination drive gave jabs to 220,000 people a day last week and is accelerating toward the goal of 300,000 per day, with more than 5.7 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine arriving this week from the U.S.
JOHANNESBURG -- The cars lined up by the strikingly modern mosque and were guided to parking bays where the drivers soon got jabs.
More than 7.7 million South Africans have received at least one dose, with more than 100,000 fully vaccinated, representing 1.6 per cent of the population, according to official figures. Across Africa, less than 1.5 per cent of the continent's 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Another encouraging factor is the enthusiasm for the vaccines. More than 70% of South Africans say they are eager to get vaccines while just 10 per cent say they are opposed, according to surveys. A local firm, Aspen Pharmacare, is assembling the J&J vaccines from large batches of the ingredients and putting them into vials, a process called fill and finish. The factory in Gqeberha can produce more than 200 million J&J doses which will be distributed across the continent.
"South Africa is slowly but steadily coming out of the third wave with a curve that is on a downward trajectory. The peak of the third wave was higher than the previous two peaks and a slightly more severe situation in terms of caseload," said Mosa Moshabela, professor of public health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
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