This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
BusinessLive reports that a higher proportion of medical scheme members have received a Covid-19 vaccine shot compared with non-medical scheme members under the government’s immunisation drive.
The Department of Health’s deputy director-general for National Health Insurance, Nicholas Crisp, told MPs on Wednesday that this raised fairness concerns. By Tuesday evening, 4.7-million people had received at least one shot. A total of 1.6-million recipients were medical scheme members, representing 17.8% of the 8.99-million medical scheme market, while 3.1-million were non-medical scheme members, representing 6% of the 50-million uninsured market. Crisp conceded the government’s strategy of prioritising sectors such as health-care workers and teachers, most of whom are public servants who belong to medical schemes, had tipped the scales towards the insured market, but said the location of private sector vaccination sites have also played a role. The uninsured population is proving hardest to reach in urban areas, particularly in townships, where it is difficult to motivate people to be vaccinated. Crisp said the vaccination rate among public servants was highest among health-care workers, who were the first group to be offered vaccines. So far 76% of public sector health-care workers have been vaccinated, with 68.6% fully covered. The vaccine rollout was dealt a blow by the violence that racked KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng last week, with 250,000 doses forgone, Crisp reported.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page