The Eastern Cape vaccination programme, focusing on employees in the education sector, has been hit by delays which have seen more than 7 000 non-government employees including teachers left behind.
The provincial health department said it had vaccinated 16 600 embers of the "education family" since the start of the campaign two days ago.
It said the group left behind are workers appointed by School Governing Bodies (SGBs) and independent schools.
The department said it cannot vaccinate the group until they have been verified and captured into the Electronic Vaccination Data System.
Health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said unlike public schools employees, the group is not in the government payment system known as PERSAL, making it difficult to verify them.
Kupelo said the provincial education department must send a list of all names of the people hired by SGBs and private schools to the Department of Basic Education.He said the provincial department of education was delaying the process.
Kupelo said:
We encourage the Eastern Cape department of education to submit their lists to National Department of Basic Education for the following cohorts - SGB appointed workers at public schools and their Independent Schools employees. National DBE will send these to National Department of Health for uploading on Electronic Vaccination Data System. Eastern Cape department of health will then be able to vaccinate these officials.
The province has received 45 600 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to roll out the education sector vaccination programme.
It has a target of vaccinating 76 825 employees within two weeks.
Kupelo said another consignment of 31 000 doses is expected next week.
Kupelo added:
Eastern Cape department of education needs to speed up as this is delaying our vaccinators and cause those staff [left behind] to be unhappy and we want to control this to avoid fraudulent attempts of vaccinations.“We are excited by the smooth start of the 66 vaccination sites in the province and the response by the targeted group. Eastern Cape is currently number 2 in the country after KwaZulu-Natal province which has established over 100 vaccination sites,” said Kupelo.
Eastern Cape education department spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima said the department has since submitted the list required by health department.
Meanwhile, more than 105 000 people in the education sector have been vaccinated in seven provinces in the past two days.
The Department of Basic Education announced this in a statement on Friday.
The national department further said it has identified 582 000 educators and staff who are expected to be vaccinated by 8 July 2021 in the sector.
