It’s no secret that nothing is going even remotely back to normal until South Africa manages to get its population vaccinated. Health specialist Discovery has been trying to help with that, throwing loads of effort at finishing up South Africa’s second batch of vaccines — for those over the age of 60.

In a message to its members, the medical aid provider (among other things) outlined how the vaccination process was going and how they intend to scale up the pace of stabbing people with tiny needles. Obviously, it’s fine when they do it.

Quite the Discovery

If you’ve got any family members over the age of 60 and happen to live in Johannesburg, you might be familiar with 1 Discovery Place, which — according to the company — is the country’s largest national private sector site for COVID-19 vaccinations. It’s handling 15% of all vaccinations in the city and 12% of private vaccinations on a national level. The company hopes to double the number of people being seen at that one location, but it has plans to help out in other places in SA as well.

Four more mass vaccination sites have been opened across Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, but Discovery has another site intended in Gallagher Estate, hopefully by the end of June this year, which should see some 5,000 daily vaccinations taking place. It’s also considering new sites in Cape Town and another in KZN. The exact location wasn’t specified.

There is a final target here. The company said, “We are also applying our learnings from 1 Discovery Place to bolster vaccination capacity countrywide, with the aspiration of vaccinating 40,000 individuals per day when all of our associated sites are at full capacity.” Since the country’s vaccination target is 130,000 people per day in order to cover the elderly and vulnerable (we’re on 90,000 now) by the end of August this year, that’s a significant chunk of the overall total.