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Journalists the next to be added to SA’s vaccine rollout

The South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) has welcomed a decision taken by government to prioritise journalists as part of its vaccine rollout efforts. This will see those in the media industry next in line to receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with healthcare workers doing to in the first phase of the rollout and followed by teachers during the second.

With journalists designated as frontline workers, according to the SANEF, many have been reporting on the pandemic in testing conditions, while others have risked infection in order to do their jobs and share vital information with the citizens of South Africa.

“On Monday, the government informed SANEF that journalists will be next in line as soon as all media houses submit their information regarding their employees’ age groups and regions where they are stationed. All community media establishments around the country including freelance journalists will also receive forms that they must complete and submit to Government Communications and Information System (GCIS),” explained the organisation in a press statement.

“SANEF particularly appreciates the government’s decision to not only inoculate frontline journalists but to accommodate all categories of media workers as the government wants to target and deal with the media as a sector than a selected group,” it added.

While the decision has been taken, the process of registration and necessary steps that need to be followed are yet to be disclosed, with more information expected in the coming days and weeks.

As we await such news, the SANEF was careful to point out how it lobbied government to make this call.

“In January this year, Sanef made an impassioned plea to the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) for journalists to be on the list of essential workers and be prioritised in the second phase of the rollout. We also lobbied President Cyril Ramaphosa, pleading the case for journalists to be considered for vaccination. SANEF was extremely concerned that without a plan to vaccinate journalists, they will continue to get infected by the disease. We argued that, like other front-line workers, journalists posed a serious threat to their families and that this had an equally daunting impact on the state of their mental health,” it explains.

With more frontline workers fighting the same fight as journalists have been doing for the past 16 months, we trust that similar decisions will be taken for the likes of couriers, taxi drivers and those working in the restaurant industry to name a few.

[Image – CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA on Flickr]

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