Millions more vaccines expected to land in SA between April and June

Speaking on SABC TV News on Wednesday evening, Mkhize downplayed concerns over the delays of the Covid-19 rollout in the country.

He says the global coronavirus vaccine drive has suffered a major blow due to the high demand for doses throughout the world.

South Africa’s own plan was derailed, when it was established that a million jabs of Astra Zeneca that arrived in February, would not provide effective protection against the new variant first identified in the country.

The study showed that these vaccines would provide minimal protection against mild diseases caused by the new variant.

The government subsequently decided to sell its Astra Zeneca stock to the African Union.

The Department of Health announced on Sunday that the deal had been completed.

“Things changed because for the 501.V2 variant and the changes has caused us to be where we are.

“If our vaccines had worked, we would be talking about over 2 million people already being vaccinated.

“We have Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the next 2 weeks we would have gotten the full 500 thousand bulk.

“Over the weekend 300 thousand will be received and the other 200 thousand will be delayed,” says Mkhize.

Despite the criticism of a too slow rollout, the minister believes the country had a good initial plan.

“There were vaccines in January, we just disposed of them.They did come at the time that we had said they would come, there would have been more have we not received the advice not to use them.”

He says the country will receive more vaccines between April and June.

“The delay on Pfizer is with regard to the contractual delay which we expect should be resolved in the next few days. So in April we expect that between April and June, 7 million of the Pfizer vaccines should be with us and 3 million of the Johnson and Johnson should be with us.

Across the whole world people are having delays because of global supply and demands of the vaccine challenges,” said Mkhize.

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