Chaotic queues for Covid jab

Durban health workers flock in hundreds for vaccine

THERE was chaos yesterday outside Durban’s St Augustine’s Hospital as hundreds of health-care workers formed snaking queues waiting to be vaccinated.

Vaccinations under the Sisonke implementation study for health-care workers (HCWs) is expected to come to an end tomorrow as the study organisers did not want it to clash with the official roll-out. The study was also expanded to include non-patient facing HCWs. But the rush to get the vaccine before the study ended saw hundreds show up at the hospital without an appointment.

There was also confusion among those queuing about whether they needed to have a voucher number to be eligible to get the vaccine.

A doctor who had been queuing since 5.30am with a group of young doctors said: “If everybody was on the same page it would be nice. Some people are saying one thing and others are saying something else.”

A nurse who had just received his vaccination after joining the queue at 10am, said he did not have a voucher but had registered before yesterday.

“We came here and didn’t have a voucher number. They just had a list, checked our ID and we received an SMS thanking me for registering with Johnson & Johnson, then after 10 minutes I got a voucher number. I was taken inside and given a sticker,” he said.

However, a health-care worker who had come prepared with a voucher and had queued for three days in a row, said she was turned away because she was “not on the list”. She raised concerns about how the elderly would cope with similar situations from next week.

Jacques du Plessis, the managing director of Netcare Hospitals, said they had seen an influx of people arriving at the hospital who had not booked an appointment, but had hoped to

“walk in”.

This was fuelled by what he said was misinformation being circulated among health-care workers in light of the fact that the Sisonke programme was nearing its end.

“St Augustine’s Hospital and Netcare Milpark Hospital continue to vaccinate only eligible health-care workers who have registered to receive their Covid-19 vaccinations and who have been prebooked for vaccination today (Thursday) and tomorrow,” Du Plessis said.

“While both St Augustine’s and Milpark hospitals have been set up to vaccinate a high number of health-care workers, there are no additional vaccination slots available and we are therefore unable to vaccinate any walk-ins.

“We therefore strongly urge individuals without appointments not to come to either of these facilities and endanger themselves by arriving en masse.”

He said that at St Augustine’s Hospital there had been a bottleneck of people queuing outside the facility that resulted

in a lack of social distancing.

“Inside our premises, at the vaccination facilities, we are maintaining social distancing with markings on the ground and chairs that have been carefully distanced, but areas outside the hospital grounds are unfortunately beyond our control.”

Dr Glenda Gray of the SA Medical Research Council, who is also the co-principal investigator of the Sisonke implementation study, said yesterday that in order to ensure the use of all the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the definition of HCWs eligible for vaccination was expanded so that even those who were not patient-facing could get it.

Gray said HCWs who did not receive the study vaccine should not panic.

“It they don’t make the queues and miss out, they will be prioritised in the government roll-out for health-care workers. They don’t have to panic, they will get a vaccine,” she said.

She added that with the phase 2 roll-out scheduled to start next week,

Sisonke did not want to confuse people by overlapping with the government’s national roll-out, and therefore wanted to end before the start of phase 2 on Monday.

Gray said that on a positive note, the eagerness of HCWs to get vaccinated boded well for the national roll-out.

“It’s exciting for us because we were worried about vaccine hesitancy and were worried about poor demand after the pausing of the study. Just seeing this demand is very important for the national roll-out,” said Gray.

She added that she did not believe the queues outside the hospital would create a super-spreader event.

“When I saw the eNCA report (on the queues), it was in an open area and hopefully there was lots of sanitising going on and mask wearing and people weren’t hugging,” she said.

Gray said that they were hoping that the study would reach its target by Saturday at 2pm. However, if the target was not reached, they would discuss with the government how best to use the remainder of the study vaccine.

Dr Atiya Mosam, an executive board member of the Public Health Association of SA, was vaccinated this week as a walk-in. Mosam said she believed the confusion arose when health workers were allowed to walk in to a vaccination centre without a voucher.

In terms of people over 60 scheduled to be vaccinated from next week, Mosam said she did not believe that the same situation seen yesterday would unfold next week.

“The system will probably be different and be similar to what has happened prior to this week, in that it was controlled and people had vouchers and a time to be vaccinated,” she said.

Professor Shabir Madhi, a vaccinologist based at Wits University, said the events at St Augustine’s and elsewhere where there had been long queues were of grave concern, especially given the expected third wave.

“The rush might have been due to trying to maximise the number of health-care workers that are vaccinated by Saturday. In any case, it illustrates the importance of needing to plan,” Madhi said, adding that it was hoped the logistics to avoid this from happening during the general vaccine roll-out to even larger numbers of people per day had been adequately planned by the Department of Health.

UCT public health specialist Professor Leslie London said whether the long queues were a super-spreader depended on if masking, ventilation and social distancing were successfully implemented, as well as how long people queued for.

However, he said most of the superspreader events noted to date involved some kind of risky activity. This included clubbing, and singing at a church gathering or funerals. London added that it was important that when vaccination numbers increased in Phase 2, proper systems were in place.