Vaccine hesitancy and its impact on South Africa’s economic recovery initiatives
The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber recently hosted a highly informative webinar on vaccination hesitancy and how it is harming South Africa’s economic recovery initiatives.
With all the necessary information about the safety of vaccinations readily available and sufficient vaccines are available at numerous sites around the city, people are still failing to metabolise this opportunity to safeguard their lives .
Speaking during the webinar titled Vaccine hesitancy, Dr Saadiq Kariem, the Chief Director General Specialist and Emergency Services at the Western Cape Department of Health, said they discovered that vaccine hesitancy was very common among people who had chronic illnesses and were concerned about how being vaccinated would affect them in the long run.
“This informs us that we need to be consistent messaging in our communication to empower people against polarised messaging from people who are anti vaccinations. The study we conducted on vaccine hesitancy has given us a better understanding of where these fears are coming from. But more importantly, it has empowered us to formulate an informed strategy to better respond to this challenge,” said Dr Kariem.
He said the current data on vaccinations continued to show strong protection of full vaccination against severe diseases and death. “There is no evidence of increased risk to Covid-19 infection, severe diseases or death in the first few weeks immediately following vaccination. Thus far, no cause of death has been directly linked to vaccines – even serious side effects are rare and very importantly, the known and potential benefits of Covid-19 vaccination far outweigh all known and potential risks,” he said.
Dr Kariem emphasised the importance of empowering the public to understand how vaccinations worked and their benefits. “It’s essential or government to partner with different stakeholders such as businesses and community forums to spread the right message. We need to use a nuanced approach where our key messaging is driven by trusted voices within communities.”
Another guest speaker, Hanna Kotze a Clinical Social Worker said there was a need to recognise that people were suffering from a level of trauma due to Covid-19 fatigue.
“People don’t necessarily need to be directly affected by a traumatic experience, but can feel a sense of trauma just by thinking about what could happen if they were to be impacted by an incident. Mortalities are also inflicting some level of trauma to many people. As such, we need to instil confidence in the vaccine programme by continuously sharing the right kind of information using correct platforms for maximised reach,” Kotze said.
In his closing remarks, Business Chamber Board Member MC Botha said the current concerning situation relating to vaccine hesitancy required courageous leadership and this was the reason the organisation was involved in creating ongoing conversations about vaccines and their importance for protecting lives and livelihoods.
He said the Business Chamber has a responsibility to empower its member companies with relevant information on vaccinations to protect their employees as part of health and safety protocols in the workplace.
“As a result, from the onset, we have been encouraging our member companies to safeguard their employees by establishing onsite vaccination sites to help stop the spread of the virus. More importantly, we need to achieve herd immunity to ensure we get the economy going again,” he said.