COVID-19 online vaccine registrations open for all South Africans – How to register

Staff Writer16 April 2021

South Africans who want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and are over the age of 60 can register through the electronic vaccination data system (EVDS) from 16:00 today.

The Department of Health’s chief director Dr Lesley Bamford said only people who registered on the system will be vaccinated. People without Internet access will be assisted with their registration.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said all steps of the vaccination process will be available through walk-in services where people will be helped to register.

“Those unable to self-register can visit walk-in centres and vaccination sites,” Mkhize said.

Bamford previously said online registration for all South Africans who want to receive vaccines will open on 16 April.

However, on Friday morning only healthcare workers and people over 60 were allowed to register. It is not clear whether this will change in the coming days.

People under the age of 60 who try to register are met with the message:

Please note that registration for vaccination is currently only open for those that are 60 years or older. Those under 60 years of age will be invited to register at a future date.

The Department of Health added that the system will be live at 16:00 today, and that it is only in demo mode now.

After a person has registered on the system and they become eligible to be vaccinated, they will receive an SMS with the date, time, and venue where they will receive the vaccine.

Bamford said there will be a range of public and private sector vaccination sites which include:

Health facilities such as hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and GP practices.
Non-health sites such as schools, church halls, shopping centres and work-based occupational health sites.

When people present themselves at a site to receive the vaccine, there is a procedure which will be followed.

This procedure includes being tested for COVID-19, identification, and a consent process.

COVID-19 screening – People who test positive for COVID-19 will not be allowed to receive the vaccine. They will be given an opportunity to be vaccinated later.
Identification – Everyone will be required to provide proof of identity through an ID card, drivers’ licence, or equivalent. Medical aid members are requested to bring these details along.
Consent – There is a short consent process and a few questions to make sure that there’s no contraindication.
Post vaccine – After a person received the vaccine, they will be observed for 15 minutes.
Follow-up – People will receive an SMS which confirms they have been vaccinated. If they require a second dose, they will receive a date for the second dose.

While the vaccination registrations are now open for all South Africans, the vaccines will only be rolled out later.

The new phase of South Africa’s vaccine rollout will begin on 17 May, Mkhize said.

He said this new vaccination phase should take six months and would therefore be wrapped up in October.

How to register

People who would like to register to be vaccinated should visit the electronic vaccination data system (EVDS) website.

The government explained the information submitted during registration will be used to identify eligible vaccination beneficiaries and to plan the supply of vaccines and ancillary items.

Residential data are needed to allocate beneficiaries to their nearest available service point while contact details will be used to communicate with people about the vaccination program.

To register, people need to have access to the Internet, their ID number or Passport, and general contact information, including a cellphone number.

Other required information includes your primary employer and location of work, professional registration details, and medical aid.

With all information at hand registration should take between 2 and 3 minutes.

The registration process is as follows:

Visit the landing page and enter your South African ID Number.
Enter your general information – name and surname, date of birth, gender, email address, and mobile number.
Provide your employment and medical aid details if applicable.
Select your primary location of work and health establishment (from a dropdown list).
To complete the registration, accept the terms and conditions and click ‘Submit Registration’.

The final screen will confirm that your registration has been successful and you will receive an SMS notification confirming that your registration has been received by the EVDS.

Electronic vaccination data system (EVDS)

Clicks, Dis-Chem plan to offer Covid-19 vaccines

Dis-Chem to administer vaccine at drive-through stations.

By Nqobile Dludla, Reuters 7 Jan 2021 20:45

Clicks store. Image: Supplied

South Africa’s two biggest pharmacy chains Clicks Group and Dis-Chem Pharmacies said they plan to offer Covid-19 shots at their stores and provide storage and distribution facilities in the vaccine rollout programme once the government provides more details.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize on Sunday called on the private sector, including pharmacies, to help with the rollout but the government is yet to outline how exactly they will help.

Dis-Chem and Clicks have a combined 45% dispensary market share.

Dis-Chem, with more than 180 stores, will offer the vaccines at all its clinics nationwide and is also looking to offer them at its eight drive-through Covid-19 testing stations, Dis-Chem National Clinic Manager Lizeth Kruger told Reuters.

“We will assist and put our hand up,” Kruger said, adding that Dis-Chem will be involved from the second phase of the rollout, which includes vaccinating essential workers like teachers and people over 60 years old.

In the first phase the government wants to vaccinate about 1.25 million healthcare workers in the country.

Healthcare experts have said that for the government to expeditiously vaccinate two-thirds of a country of 58 million people, it will have to pool resources from the private sector at a scale never done before in South Africa.

But so far the government has not laid out a clear strategy on how it will roll out and vaccinate millions of people, even as cases of coronavirus reach record highs every day due to a new, more contagious variant identified around mid December.

Health Minister Mkhize said on Thursday that the country plans to vaccinate 40 million people within a year to achieve herd immunity.

Dis-Chem has three big warehouses with cold chain storage and distribution facilities across South Africa and can keep vaccines at cold temperatures of between 2 and 8 degree Celsius, Kruger added.

Clicks, in an emailed response, said: “Our network is immediately ready for the distribution and administration of vaccines.”

It has nurses and pharmacists in stores poised to support the implementation, it added.

Clicks runs South Africa’s biggest drug distribution and bulk and wholesale supplier, called United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD), which currently services Aspen Pharmacare , which will manufacture the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.

70% AstraZeneca and 5% Pfizer: These are the vaccines you’re most likely to get in SA

Business Insider SA

Jan 07, 2021, 12:20 PM

Vials of undiluted Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.

In South Africa you will most likely receive the Covid-19 vaccine created by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, government assumptions show.
That means two injections, at least four weeks apart, with a 70% chance of success.
The government budget of R30 billion for vaccines is predicated on buying only relatively small numbers of coronavirus vaccine doses from the likes of Pfizer and Moderna.
For more stories go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.

The Covid-19 vaccine you are overwhelmingly likely to receive in South Africa – based on current planning – will be from AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the government said on Thursday.

Current budget assumptions include that 70% of all the vaccines bought will come from AstraZeneca, health minister Zweli Mkhize told Parliament.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is sold on a non-profit basis, and is the cheapest mainstream-approved vaccine currently available, but South Africa has yet to actually secure supplies.

The government budget holds that it will pay R54 for each AstraZeneca vaccination.

The mix the government expects will consist of 5% of the total number of vaccine doses required each from Pfizer and Moderna, Mkhize's numbers show. Those are the most expensive on the market at present, and government expects to pay R536 per dose to Moderna, and R299 per dose to Pfizer, which has reportedly offered a special discount.

The remaining 20% of doses are expected to come from Johnson & Johnson, at R153 a piece. Hundreds of thousands of units of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are expected to start rolling out of a factory in Port Elizabeth soon, but though talks are apparently underway, none have been earmarked for use in South Africa yet.

The AstraZeneca shot most South Africans are likely to receive requires a repeat after at least four weeks, and no more than 12 weeks. It is injected into muscle, usually the upper arm.

Initial studies found it to be 70% effective after two shots, compared to the 90% efficacy reported for the more expensive, and trickier to handle, Pfizer vaccine.

Based on the assumed mix of vaccines, the government believes it will spend R30 billion acquiring doses, Mkhize said. Additional costs will include "demand creation" and setting up a "no-fault immunisation compensation scheme"

Treasury has arrived at the vaccine party, says health minister

The Treasury has confirmed it will pay for the majority of the population to receive Covid-19 vaccinations, with the help of the private sector

07 JANUARY 2021 - 16:25 CAROL PATON

The Treasury has “come to the party” and confirmed that it will pay for the majority of the population to receive Covid-19 vaccinations, when they become available, health minister Zweli Mkhize told MPs on Thursday.

Mkhize said that while the government has agreed to accept some help from the private sector — medical schemes have offered to cover the cost of their own members and subsidise a number of public sector patients — the Treasury has confirmed that it will authorise the necessary deviations to enable procurement.

Mkhize was briefing parliament’s portfolio committee on health during which he also announced that the government has secured its first vaccine supply of 1.5-million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India.

The Treasury has been slow to step up to the challenge of procuring a vaccine and did not pay the initial deposit to secure SA’s place in the Covax global vaccine initiative in December. The deposit — R327m — which represents 15% of the R2.2bn that will ultimately have to be paid was paid by the Solidarity Fund, an NGO funded by big business.

Explaining why this had been necessary, Mkhize said the “Treasury advised that what we needed to do is to raise the money so there would be no need to tamper with the budget framework tabled [in October] and so we needed to look at what could be done to get additional support from the Solidarity Fund”.

Discussions with the Treasury this week resulted in it agreeing to pay the necessary costs of vaccine acquisition. Mkhize did not disclose what the budget might be, but estimates by health experts and by the Business for SA (B4SA) task-team, range from R12bn to R20bn to vaccinate the entire country. This estimate includes the distribution costs. Of this the private sector has offered to cover R7.1bn through medical schemes.

“The Treasury has allocated amounts — it is not fixed at this moment but they have come to the party to say they are working with health to make sure that health requirements will be funded. We are going to have a special dispensation to allow deviations so that different manufacturers can be engaged. Treasury will be following a process so there is no difficulty with procurement processes so that we can speedily purchase and pay for the vaccines,” said Mkhize.

Speaking in the portfolio meeting, the EFF was scathing about the government’s reliance “on charity” to meet an obvious public good. EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu had written to the committee to request that finance minister Tito Mboweni attend the meeting but Mkhize said this would not have been possible as Mboweni had a family bereavement.

The government has set a target to vaccinate 40-million people by the end of 2021. This would mean vaccinating 316,000 people a day. The government plans to ensure 6,300 full-time vaccinators will be available.

Neither the Treasury nor the health department have revealed the price of the AstraZeneca vaccine to be supplied for health workers. Earlier estimates in the public domain are in the region of $5 a dose.

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SA secures early Covid-19 vaccine for health workers

One-million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine are due to arrive in January

07 JANUARY 2021 - 12:33 CAROL PATON

UPDATED 07 JANUARY 2021 - 12:58

SA has secured a Covid-19 vaccine for health workers, with one-million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine due to arrive in January and a further 500,000 in February.

This follows successful negotiations with the Serum Institute of India, manufacturer of the vaccine. Health minister Zweli Mkhize made the announcement to parliament’s portfolio committee on health on Thursday.

Mkhize said that the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) was ready to process the licensing of the vaccine and would make use of “reliance agreements” with other regulatory jurisdictions to ensure there were no unnecessary delays or impediments.

The public — and public-sector workers in particular — have been extremely anxious about the absence of a concrete vaccine plan by the government, which has been charged with leaving negotiations with manufacturers too late. The only other agreement SA has is with the Covax global vaccine initiative — a pooled arrangement of several manufacturer and government — which has promised to deliver the first batch to SA by April at the earliest.

SA had been on the brink of securing a separate arrangement with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to meet the needs of health workers. But that hit a hurdle when the Indian government said it would bar the export of vaccines until its own vulnerable population had been taken care of. The SII has since clarified that it may export to governments for vaccination programmes but not to the private market.

“On Sunday I gave an undertaking to the SA public that we will prioritise the protection of our health workers by ensuring that they receive the vaccine by February 2021. At the time I could not disclose further details. Today, I am pleased to announce that the SII has given us permission to make a public announcement and start engaging with all relevant stakeholders in preparation for the roll out,” said Mkhize.

Mkhize said he also wanted to reassure the public that the acquisition had been done directly by the department of health.

“This strengthens the credibility of the process as all the negotiations and payment issues are managed directly by government with the manufacturer. We will now be engaging all relevant stakeholders in order to ensure the efficient and effective rollout of the vaccine for our health workers,” he said.

The direct relationship between government and one manufacturer will mean there will not be a repeat of the fiasco in procuring personal protective equipment (PPE) for the country, which involved contracting with multiple vendors, he said.

Update: January 7 2021
This article has been updated with new information.