Discovery’s rewards programme, Vitality, announced this week that members aged 18 or older will be awarded 2 500 Vitality points for being fully vaccinated against Covid-19 this year. The points will be awarded retrospectively in October for those who have already been vaccinated.
The company says it will communicate more details to members in October.
Discovery Vitality chief executive Dinesh Govender says: “If members have already been vaccinated, there is nothing more they need to do – points will be automatically allocated before the end of the year.”
He says the evidence of the vaccines’ effectiveness against severe disease and death from Covid-19 is overwhelming.
“Vaccination is the single most important thing we can do to protect ourselves and others against Covid-19. The pandemic has been deadly and a fourth wave is likely, yet the ability to suppress it remains within our control. Based on our actuarial projections, over 30 000 lives could be saved if we are able to vaccinate the majority of our population over the coming months. The data reflects the power of vaccination to save lives and reduce our healthcare burden: vaccination reduces infection and transmission risk by 50 to 80%, reduces hospitalisation risk by 60 to 90%, and reduces risk of death by over 90%,” Dinesh says.
“In fact, while your (unvaccinated) risk of death from Covid-19 is eight to 10 times higher than death from flu, once vaccinated, your risk of death from Covid-19 is lower than from flu. Given that vaccination is our best hope of beating the pandemic and restoring our national vitality and way of life, we need to encourage vaccination at scale.”
Vitality’s points offer follows Discovery CEO Adrian Gore’s announcement last week that vaccination will be mandatory for all Discovery employees from next year and the recent announcement by Discovery Life that new policyholders will be penalised if they refuse to be vaccinated.
PERSONAL FINANCE