The vaccination centre is prepped to vaccinate an estimate of 7 500 people, it will mostly cater for the employees of the hospitality and tourism sector, service providers and their families around the community. “We obviously want to protect our staff, but it is equally important to us to ensure that people living in our local communities are looked after.” said Sun City General Manager Brett Hoppe.

The site launched on Saturday 24 July 2021, it has 15 vaccinators on site that must have the ability to vaccinate 15 people a day with the Sun Arena as the primary vaccination site.

North West Health MEC Sambatha Madoda explained that the venue will soon become the biggest vaccination site. “As we are here today to officially launch. They must start vaccination. We want them to do vaccinations, almost like education did, and social development had done. In a period of fewer than five days, they must have finished the target of the sector. Based on that, we would then do an evaluation together with them and the department to see what else we can do with the site.”

However, Brett Hoppe said this will not be a problem as the sector is used to managing large crowds, “We will start with five vaccinators for 200 people for the first three days to iron out any possible glitches before we increase capacity, but we don’t anticipate any problems as Sun City is used to hosting events of the size magnitude of the Nedbank golf challenge, so we are confident that the preparations for our vaccination site will be seamless.”

Since the implementation of lockdown restrictions, the resort has suffered a temporary closure, that resulted to its painful loss of R1.1 billion but this has provided the resort an opportunity to prepare its own vaccination program alongside others nationwide.

North West Tourism MEC Keneetswe Mosenogi said this will assist in ensuring the tourism and hospitality sector can start reopening. “We can go back to normal and everyone will have confidence that when you interact as a tourist you will be interacting with a vaccinated person, I think this will be a life for us all.”

“Before we travel, we must vaccinate, at least there is some form of confidence that as a traveler, you have been vaccinated and when you visit Sun City or any establishment around you will be comfortable knowing those around you have been vaccinated.”

Sun City’s convention centre has received the health department’s seal of approval to operate as a vaccination site up until December, but Hoppe is confident that all employees, their family members and eligible community members will be vaccinated in the next two months.