By Nhlanhla Mbatha
American astronaut Neil Armstrong declared as he landed on the moon in 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
In a symbolic gesture on Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa, as first citizen of the country, took the first dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier health worker Sister Zoliswa Gidi-Dyosi took the hospital seat and had the vaccine administered, becoming the first South African to go through the experience.
Ramaphosa was then followed by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, who also took the jab, becoming the second high-profile politician, all this happening in full glare of national and international media in Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town.
The two leaders put to bed the long and lingering fear that had gripped the country around the safety and efficacy of the vaccination and the vaccines.
Before that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund, South Africa was among the 130 countries in the world that were yet to administer a single dose.
That translated to 2.5 billion people worldwide who so far had been completely shut out of the global vaccine campaign.
The WHO this week said the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported worldwide fell by 16% last week to 2.7 million.
The number of new deaths reported also fell 10% week-on-week, to 81 000, the WHO said late on Tuesday in its weekly epidemiological update, using figures up to Sunday.
New case numbers dropped 20% last week in Africa and in the Western Pacific, 18% in Europe, 16% in the Americas and 13% in southeast Asia.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that the number of new cases had declined for a fifth consecutive week, dropping by almost half, from more than 5 million cases in the week of January 4.
He said that simply showed that non-pharmaceutical and public health measures worked, even in the presence of variants.
Ghebreyesus said what mattered now was how we responded to the trend. “The fire is not out, but we have reduced its size. If we stop fighting it on any front, it will come roaring,” he said.
Here at home, with the arrival of 80000 Johnson & Johnson vaccines, we are about to turn a corner in the fight against the pandemic.
In the midst of the slow pace and bad decisions we have made, resulting in the loss of many lives – as a homage to those departed, let us now all line up to take the much-awaited and life-saving jab. The journey begins now.
The Star