Johannesburg: A minister in the South Africa government has told the country’s parliament that the rights of individuals who do not want to get vaccinated for COVID-19 are overtaken by the rights of a collective that opts to be vaccinated. “A collective right becomes superior to an individual right. We will therefore not deny you to stay at home, if you so wish. But it would actually be foolhardy to say you can’t force yourself into a taxi of 10 other people who are vaccinated, if you refuse to vaccinate but want to travel with them to work,” South Africa’s Deputy Health Minister Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo said on Wednesday.
He was reacting to some members of Parliament, who were adamant that the right of citizens to choose not to be vaccinated was being trampled upon by the government’s decision to appoint a task team to investigate mandatory vaccinations for access to workplaces and public events. President Cyril Ramaphosa made this announcement as part of a national address on Sunday when he said that Deputy President David Mabuza would lead the team.
Dhlomo said individuals could choose not to get vaccinated but they can not be allowed to expose the majority of vaccinated people to the risk of COVID-19 infection. You probably may find a space alone for yourself somewhere, because while you insist on your individual right not to vaccinate, you must also be ready to protect the collective rights of many other people than yourself,” he said.
Dhlomo also reacted to parliamentarians who queried why Ramaphosa had not raised the lockdown from its current lowest Level One of a five-level strategy to deal with the pandemic after South Africa announced the discovery of the Omicron variant. Dhlomo said previously there was nothing to mitigate a full lockdown.
“The President has said that we now have the solace of a vaccine and if we do use it, we will go forward. Scientists are saying that even if you are vaccinated, you could still get COVID-19, but it would not be so severe that it will take you to hospital or ICU or death,” Dhlomo said. South Africa moves into a fourth wave with the economic hub of Gauteng province accounting for 80 per cent of the 11,500 infections reported for the 24-hour period ended on Thursday.
Some individuals and political parties are leading anti-vaccine campaigns that have dampened the government’s target of reaching herd immunity by the end of the year.
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