Too Early To Say If Elections Had Impact On COVID-19 Infections – Health Dept

Acting Director-General Nicholas Crisp said that it was too early to determine what impact the election campaigning had on the COVID-19 infection rate but so far there was no spike.

The department warned politicians and the public about taking extra precautions and keep to the restrictions in the days before voting day to avoid super spreader events.

“The messages that we’ve got from around the country is that queues were behaving well, there was no mass crowding that took place. Our bigger concern was prior to the elections when there were rallies with droves of people coming together. It will take a while before we see whether that has made an impact.”

The department said that it would have to monitor the data on the infection rate captured by the middle of this month to draw any links to the local government elections.

The Health Department also said that 63,000 people were vaccinated on voting day despite it being a public holiday and election day.

On average, South Africa records about 200,000 vaccines per day but there are concerns that the numbers are getting lower.

Government is chasing targets to get as many people inoculated against COVID-19 before the end of the year.

The Health Department tried its best to get as many people vaccinated on voting day by even sending pop-up stations to rural areas so that people could get a jab and vote.