Healthcare workers are encouraged to register on the Department of Health’s Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) Self Enrolment Portal, as part of government’s phased approach to the vaccine roll-out.

More than 34 000 health workers have already registered on the system, which forms part of government’s plan to lay foundations for digital health information systems.

All active health workers can self-register on the portal: www.vaccine.enroll.health.za

South Africa has received its first consignment of Covid-19 vaccines and will soon begin the process of vaccinating healthcare workers, as part of the country’s phased vaccination approach.

The EVDS will capture the relevant metrics of all South Africans that will be vaccinated, it will ensure that all vaccinated persons are contactable and alerted to optimise adherence to the regimen, and it will complete the certification process so that vaccine certificates are easy to obtain for those vaccinated and authorities that may require the certification.

While it is possible for all South Africans to register on the site, the system will automatically prioritise verified health workers for the Phase 1 roll-out of the vaccine.

The system will verify the health workers’ credentials by checking against the data provided by the persal system, private systems, facility data, employer data (for example cleaning or security contractors) and other data from organisations and other bodies that employ or regulate health care workers.

Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize noted said the portal is the beginning of a complete vaccination health information system from registration to certification.

“We are making excellent strides by leveraging off existing digital infrastructure and focusing our energy and capability on interoperability. Indeed, the National Health Council recently adopted the 2020 Health Normative Standards framework for Digital Health Interoperability to ensure that different health information platforms talk to each other, providing critical data both at provincial and national levels. This EVDS has been built on the systems and solutions that are already being implemented – capitalising on the Health Patient Registration platform. Numerous other systems will feed into the EVDS,” Mkhize explained.

He assured that the registration process will be quick and use less than one megabyte of data.

Mkhize advised that any healthcare worker who cannot register can seek assistance from the occupational health and safety representative in their municipality.

“In the event that a healthcare worker has not self-registered you will not be denied the vaccination. You will be registered at the vaccination site, it might just take a few minutes longer. 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,” he advised.