The online registration system for the COVID-19 vaccine is officially open to accept registrations for persons 18 years and older.
This, after it was announced yesterday that Cabinet had approved the registration and vaccination of people aged between 18 and 34 years, from 20 August.
The Department of Health allows registration for the COVID-19 vaccine via its electronic vaccination data system, popular messaging service WhatsApp, unstructured supplementary service data, commonly known as USSD, and a toll-free hotline.
Speaking during a press briefing this morning, health minister Dr Joe Phaahla said government decided to bring forward the registration and vaccination for persons between the ages of 18 and 34 from the initially intended 1 September.
He stated that an advantage of bringing the vaccination process of this age group 11 days earlier is that government is able to add a potential 17 million adults to the vaccination pool, which will contribute to population immunity.
“We have now decided to bring this forward to today, the 20th of August,” noted Phaahla. “The younger adults can, as of today, register, and be scheduled or self-schedule for vaccination. Alternatively, they can register and walk-in to their nearest vaccination site.
“The option of just walking into a vaccination site without registration is possible, but it will prolong the process. If you have not self-registered, when you arrive at the vaccination site, they first have to start with your registration.
“We encourage [registration], especially as we move to the 18-year-old category, who we believe are very familiar with smartphones, internet, WhatsApp and other forms of registration. They can easily make sure they are registered before they go to the vaccination sites.”
The number of South Africans fully vaccinated with either one dose of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J), or two-dose Pfizer vaccine stands at 4.62 million people, according to Phaahla.
He added that the total number of people with at least one Pfizer vaccine jab or J&J is just under eight million.
The health minister pointed out that SA still has a long way to go before reaching 70% of the adult population, but the journey is on a positive trend, with 20% of adults already fully vaccinated.
Government is targeting to inoculate 40 million of the country’s total population by March 2022.
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