- Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has urged healthcare workers to register on the newly launched Electronic Vaccine Data System self-registration portal.
- The registration process will allow the health department to ensure vaccines are delivered to the right areas in the right quantities.
- Registration will also be available at vaccination sites, should the vaccinee not have digital access.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has launched the health department's Electronic Vaccine Data System self-registration portal.
The portal is an important tool in ensuring vaccine doses arrive at the correct vaccination sites at the right time, the health minister said during a live demonstration on Wednesday morning.
Self-registration, which his currently open to healthcare workers as part of the first phase of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, requires less than one megabyte of data and takes around two minutes to complete, Mkhize said.
More than 34 000 healthcare workers had already registered on the platform by Wednesday morning.
Mkhize said:
"The system can capture the relevant metrics of all South Africans that will be vaccinated; ensure vaccinees are contactable and alerted to optimise adherence to the regimen; and complete the certification process such that vaccine certificates are easy to obtain for vaccinees and authorities that may require the certification."
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All health workers – clinical and non-clinical, public and private, persal and non-persal – have been encouraged to register on the system at vaccine.enroll.health.gov.za. The first phase will include traditional healers and funeral workers.
The registration process will ask for personal information, including an active cellphone number, to which updates will be sent, as well as details of the healthcare worker's employment. An SMS to confirm the registration will be sent within three minutes.
Once registered, the system will verify that the applicant is a health worker by checking against the data provided by the persal system, private systems, facility data, employer data and other data from healthcare regulation bodies.
"Whilst it is possible to register on the site if one is not a healthcare worker, the system will automatically prioritise verified health workers for the period of phase one," Mkhize said.
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However, Mkhize added that no one will be denied the vaccine if they have not self-registered. Registration will be possible at vaccination sites and this will also accommodate those with limited digital access during later phases of the rollout.
"We would, however, encourage all healthcare workers to register before the inoculation call because this will help us to know how to refine our current allocations and get enough vaccines to the right vaccine centres at the right time," Mkhize said.
