The health department has expressed concern about holding the local government elections, scheduled to take place in October, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, the department said the country may not have reached desired herd immunity levels by then as a result of the "slower than hoped for" rate of vaccination.

The department's Director-General Dr Sandile Buthelezi made submissions to the Electoral Commission of South Africa's (IEC) Moseneke inquiry on the possibility of holding free and fair elections during the pandemic.

The inquiry is being led by former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke.

Explaining his presentation to the inquiry, Buthelezi said: "The country is currently experiencing a high number of Covid-19 cases, with high community transmission rates. The holding of elections could put members of the public at risk of contracting Covid-19 during one of the various activities such as physical voter registration, the voting process itself, where large numbers gather at polling stations and [form] queues to complete their ballots, and large political gatherings, especially in venues that are difficult to manage or limit (such as sports stadia)."

On Wednesday, the Electoral Court postponed by-elections that were due to be held in eight wards this week. The IEC requested a postponement for the by-elections in wards in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. This was due to an increase in the Covid-19 infection rate.

The Moseneke inquiry heard that voters would only be protected during the pandemic if the country reached its population immunity targets, which would require that at least 40-million of the country's people were vaccinated.

The department said the earliest this target can be achieved was February 2022.

Buthelezi, however, told the inquiry only an estimated 16.6-million of the country's people would be vaccinated by October 2020.

The inquiry heard that by 30 June, 3 026 636 vaccine doses had been administered across the country. The health department said it was difficult to predict what the infection rate would be by October when the elections were set to take place.

It added that a fourth wave would be dependent on the level of population immunity reached. Furthermore, it said the possibility was high that the current third wave would last until August.

Moseneke said it was important that safety measures were put in place to protect voters. He said what was more worrying was the voter registration drives which were expected to take place at the end of July.

Buthelezi said population immunity wouldn't stop the rate of infections entirely but would certainly decrease the mortality rate.

"The major effect of herd immunity is the severity of the disease. People will still get infected, but some will just get infected and will just cough and sneeze and that's it. This is why it's important that even if someone is vaccinated, we still say continue with the non-pharmaceutical [measures]. So, it will have a dent. But more importantly, on hospitalisation and also on the mortality," he said.

Buthelezi said the vaccination programme may not have reached sufficient numbers of people to achieve mass population immunity and therefore delaying the elections would be recommended.