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While governments and pharmaceutical companies work tirelessly to come up with a vaccine that will put a stop to the Covid-19 coronavirus, a nationwide poll has shown that 21% of South Africans would not be willing to be vaccinated.
The findings revealed that although 70% of respondents were strongly in favour of vaccinations, 21% were strongly opposed to it.
Narrowed down, 22% of black people and 19% of minorities who participated in the survey objected to being vaccinated.
The poll was conducted by Victory Research for City Press and its sister publication Rapport in both urban and rural South Africa, utilising a representative sample of the country’s demographics. It was conducted between April 15 and 23 among a representative sample of 600 people using a random digit-dialling design.
Read: Support for lockdown plummets
It has a confidence rate of 95% and a margin of error of 4%, which is best practice for such a poll.
A big contributor to the anti-vaccine sentiment is fake news about the disease on social networks.
This led to Media Monitoring Africa relaunching its Real411 platform, which was originally set up during South Africa’s elections to enable members of the public to report disinformation and other objectionable speech to a digital complaints committee.
The committee will have three members, one with legal, one with media and one with digital expertise; who make a decision on each complaint. Retired Constitutional Court Judge Zak Yacoob will sit as the appeal commission to adjudicate on any appeal.
Beside the impending catastrophe that could be caused by a sizable portion of the country’s population not being willing to take the vaccination, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has already expressed fears that thousands of routine vaccination appointments may be missed or delayed because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
WHO has said this could raise the risk of sudden and potentially fatal outbreaks of other diseases when restrictions on movement are finally eased.
“Shutting down immunisation services in the Covid-19 pandemic risks triggering a resurgence of diseases that can be prevented with safe and effective vaccines,” warned the organisation in a statement last week as it announced a World Immunisation Week from April 24 to 30.
The statement reiterated that vaccinations were an essential health service which may be affected by the current pandemic.
“Disruption of immunisation services, even for brief periods, will result in increased numbers of susceptible individuals and raise the likelihood of outbreak-prone vaccine preventable diseases such as measles,” said the WHO statement.
The organisation said last year’s (2019) deadly measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which took more than 6 000 lives in a country already facing its largest Ebola outbreak, highlights the importance of maintaining essential health services, such as immunisation in times of emergency.
WHO director-general Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus said: “Disease outbreaks must not remain a threat when we have safe and effective vaccines to protect us”.
He added that “while the world strives to develop a new vaccine for Covid-19 at record speed, we must not risk losing the fight to protect everyone, everywhere against vaccine-preventable diseases. These diseases will come roaring back if we do not vaccinate.”
WHO is working with partners all over the world to accelerate research and development of a safe and effective vaccine and ensure equitable access for the billions of people who will need it.
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