South Africa has had more than a third of all Covid-19 Cases in Africa and the numbers are fast increasing with the emergence of the new variant of the corona virus. Unlike other countries who may even be in worse conditions like South Africa, the country is yet to commence its vaccination programme.
The President, Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa has so far secured twenty million doses, due to be delivered in the first half of 2021 but there’s no detailed timeline for a programme aiming to vaccinate as many as forty million people.
Dr Anban Pillay, deputy director-general at the Ministry of Health, states that the country was in touch with manufacturers as far back as last September.
“There have been various conversations through the better part of last year,” says Dr Pillay.
He’s defended the government’s strategy.
“The vaccines that most of the other countries have procured are vaccines that may not be ideal for South Africa from various perspectives,” he has said.
He says the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine wouldn’t be appropriate for mass vaccination, often in remote rural areas, due to its storage requirements of -70C.
There’s been serious concern recently that many poorer, less-developed countries are being left behind in the global competition to secure vaccine supplies but critics believes that South Africa as the richest country in Africa should not be in this position.
“The stunning reality is that South Africa has neither a secured vaccine supply nor a plan for mass inoculation in the foreseeable future that can withstand scrutiny,” says the Progressive Health Forum, a group of leading medical experts in the country.
The opposition Democratic Alliance has called on the government to give full details of its negotiations with vaccine suppliers, accussing the goverment of “dropping the ball”
It’s allegedly claimed that the government only started to talk to vaccine suppliers in early January.
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