Acting Minister of Health Mmamoloko Kubayi announced on Friday that registration for the Covid-19 vaccine for persons aged between 35 and 49 will open on July 15, with vaccinations for this age group to start on August 1.

The Department of Health will also be making available more health personnel to kick off weekend vaccinations from August 1.

It hopes to vaccinate at least 250 000 people a day by the end of next week and 300 000 people a day by the end of August. As of Thursday, the number of vaccinations per day have surpassed 191 000.

So far, more than four-million vaccine doses have been administered in South Africa.

Kubayi said while the vaccination process had been a learning curve, the department continued to improve.

She expressed concern at the number of infections and deaths that continued to increase and urged South Africans to take all necessary precautions.

In the last 24 hours, South Africa recorded 22 910 new cases representing a 30.4% positivity testing rate. Gauteng recorded 11 747 of the new cases.

Kubayi said the department was worried that other provinces would soon follow the same trend as Gauteng.

She said while indications were that the number of cases in Gauteng had peaked and were now declining, the province remained the country’s epicentre.

She expressed concern over the rise in numbers in the Western Cape, Limpopo, North West, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.

She assured South Africans that the department was ramping up the vaccination programme.

“We are encouraged to see more drives and increased mobilisation in various provinces. Of note this week is a vaccine drive-through in Gauteng. We have also encouraged provinces to be innovative in encouraging South Africans to vaccinate, for the mobilisation part is very critical so that we are able to engage those who might have questions about the vaccine and not being clear in what it means and how safe the vaccines are,” she said.   

The department will pay attention to districts working with the provinces to make sure there is access to vaccines.

Meanwhile, Kubayi said last week’s approval of the CoronaVac Covid-19 vaccine by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority would boost South Africa’s vaccination rollout programme in addition to the vaccines received from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

Following the approval, the department is expecting the advisory from the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19 Vaccines to take the process forward.

Kubayi also confirmed that the Lambda variant, which had begun to spread through South America, had not yet been detected in South Africa.