News24 reports that the Eastern Cape vaccination programme, focusing on employees in the education sector, has been hit by delays that have seen more than 7,000 non-government employees including teachers being left behind.

The provincial health department said it had vaccinated 16,600 members of the "education family" since the start of the campaign on Wednesday last week. It indicated that the group left behind were workers appointed by School Governing Bodies (SGBs) and independent schools. The department said it could not vaccinate that group until they had been verified and captured onto the Electronic Vaccination Data System.  Health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo explained that unlike public schools employees, the group was not in the government payment system known as Persal, making it difficult to verify them. Kupelo said the provincial education department was delaying the process and must send a list of all names of the people hired by SGBs and private schools to the Department of Basic Education (DBE). “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,” he stated. The province has received 45,600 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in order to roll out the education sector vaccination programme. It has a target of vaccinating 76,825 employees within two weeks. The DBE also assured the sector that there would be enough vaccines doses for everybody in the basic education sector as initially announced. It urged all educators and staff to follow the schedules in each district to ensure a smooth rollout of the programme.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Malibongwe Dayimani at News24

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