NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - JANUARY 11: Mr Nana Kwabena Edusei, aged 81 from Heaton, receives his vaccination from Staff Nurse Caroline McGuinness at the International Centre for Life on January 11, 2021 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The location is one of several mass vaccination centres in England to open to the public this week. The UK aims to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
The health department is working to procure Covid-19 vaccines to at least 38-million South Africans by the end of this year. As it stands, one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are expected to reach South Africa’s shores this month. This will vaccinate about 500 000 people.
However, although the vaccines are critical to ending the pandemic, no one is forced to take them, according to the country’s laws.
“There is no law in South Africa that makes [taking] vaccines mandatory,” said Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Madhi said that vaccinating is mandatory in some countries, but this is not the case in South Africa. For instance, in Italy, France and Germany, it’s compulsory to be vaccinated against measles, tetanus and polio; in the United States, healthcare workers are required to receive the influenza vaccine every year.
“It’s all about trying to ensure that the private good is upheld as the primary interest and, at times, even at the expense of individual liberties,” Madhi said.
On Thursday, while briefing parliament’s portfolio committee on health, Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize said that the government would not force anyone to take the vaccines.
This could be a welcome relief to many anti-vaxxers and vaccine-conspiracy theorists. Since the beginning of the pandemic last year, conspiracy theories attacking the validity of the virus have been rife.
Some theories claimed that a group of world leaders has created the pandemic to control the global economy; others linked the virus to the rolling out of 5G infrastructure.
Now that vaccines have arrived, so have unsubstantiated claims that the vaccine is being used to implant microchips in people and alter their DNA.
In December, South Africa’s very own Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng added to the theories during a visit to the Tembisa hospital in Gauteng.
In his request to God, Mogoeng prayed against any “vaccine of the devil”.
“If there be any vaccine that is of the devil, meant to infuse triple-six in the lives of people, meant to corrupt their DNA. Any such vaccine, Lord God almighty, may it be destroyed by fire in the name of Jesus,” he declared.
Later on, Mogoeng explained that he is not against all vaccines but against vaccines that may “corrupt” DNA.
Madhi said that if people were forced to take the vaccines — to ensure Mkhize’s plan to vaccinate 67% of the population by the end of this year is achieved — this could result in a backlash, which, he said, could result in poor compliance.
He added that because of the uncertainty around the vaccine, it is the government’s job to build public confidence in the vaccine’s safety and its benefits for protection against Covid-19.
The next step is ensuring that people can easily access vaccines by avoiding long queues (once the vaccines are in the country) and having enough vaccination facilities.
If there is a negative experience when receiving a vaccine, that can also create a “negative slump” in perceptions of the immunisation programme, Madhi said.
“There isn’t a silver bullet here. It’s a package that needs to be worked on to gain the public confidence that the vaccines are there to save lives and not to kill people or cause them to become mutants,” he said.
It seems as if the government is working to dispel the myths about the virus. During the ANC’s January 8 statement, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that misinformation about Covid-19 needs to be dealt with.
“We need to actively counter the spread of disinformation relating to Covid-19 and
unfounded conspiracy theories about the virus, its treatment and the development of vaccines,” the president said.
Jeffrey Mphahlele, the vice-president for research at the South African Medical Research Council, said not everyone will line up for the vaccinations when they are available.
“It’s not unique to us: this is a global phenomenon. There is vaccine hesitancy. You cannot say ‘I do not like to be vaccinated’, but at the same time you pose risks to other people and not wear masks and wash your hands,” he said.
Madhi said that people live in a world in which their primary source of information is social media and that, unfortunately, scientists do not use those platforms to communicate important information.
He said that people genuinely believe these Covid-19 vaccines are harmful without realising that millions of babies’ lives have been saved because of vaccines.
“We hardly see things such as measles and polio, and this is not because of some miracle of nature — that is because vaccines have largely brought those diseases under control,” Madhi said.
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