16 Jun 2021

Southern region’s District Health Management Team (DHMT) coordinator, Ms Josephine Mosimanewakgosi, has commended Batswana for receiving COVID-19 vaccines with open arms.

Speaking in an interview, she said the elderly were initially skeptical, but later embraced the vaccines.

The region has so far vaccinated 8 677 people with sinovac and 3 226 with astrazaneca, making a total of 11 903 people.

She further said they were currently administering a second dose of the sinovac and expected to finish by end of this month. 

The coordinator said by the week of July 5, they ought to have begun the second dose of astrazaneca vaccine.

Ms Mosimanewakgosi said 54 people experienced trivial side effects, which included fatigue, headache and dizziness.

She expressed disappointment about people who still disregarded COVID-19 health protocols, adding that non-compliance was the cause of high rate of positive cases. 

She undescored a need to abide by set health protocols saying that was the only way to reduce the rate of infections.

Ms Mosimanewakgosi  said the southern region recorded a total of 9 521 positive cases since beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting that Jwaneng was leading with the highest number of positive cases, having registered a death toll of 22 people.

She said Mabutsane Sub-district registered 10 deaths, Moshupa 14 while Kanye stood at 19 deaths making the total of death registered in the region 65.

Ms Mosimanewakgosi said they had since started teaching the public proper ways of handling corpses of those who died at home.

She, however, urged people to call health workers and mortuary people to assist in order to avoid getting infected with COVID-19 as well as to do post-mortem to determine the cause of death.

She commended health care workers for their pivotal role and selfless battle in fighting the pandemic, providing comfort and caring for COVID-19 patients. ENDS