Mkhize vows ‘free for all’ Covid-19 vaccination
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has reiterated that Covid-19 inoculations won’t burn the pockets of South Africans.
Mkhize told members of Parliament on Tuesday that the coronavirus vaccine would be free.
South Africa received a batch of 80 000 Johnson & Johnson vials on Tuesday evening.
This after the first shipment to arrive, the AstraZeneca vaccine, were shown to be ineffective again mild and moderate symptoms of the variant first discovered in South Africa.
Mkhize announced that the vaccines will be paid for largely by public funds.
The private sector is expected to supplement some the costs.
Government is yet to detail the rollout plan.
“The vaccines will be predominantly funded by the fiscus whilst the private sector, in particular private health funders, will augment the funding and other resources required to implement the programme,” Mkhize said during the debate on the State of the Nation Address.
“As such, vaccination will be free at the point of care and no citizen should pay out of pocket when they get inoculated.”
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Mkhize reiterated government’s efforts to ensure sufficient doses to achieve herd immunity by the end of the year.
“As government we are actively engaging manufacturers and suppliers of the Covid-19 vaccines through different but interrelated channels.
“These initiatives have, to-date allowed us to engage with the manufacturers of multiple vaccines, namely AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sinovac, and the Sputnik V. Recently, we have been in discussion with Cuba to engage them on the development of their candidate vaccine,” Mkhize added.
He admitted the scrapping of the AstraZeneca jabs was a major disappointment, but vowed it would not deter the rollout strategy.
“The recent announcement around the limited efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which we had already procured ,was certainly disappointing, however we were determined not to be derailed from our commitment to rollout vaccines in February.”
Mkhize refuted claims that the 1 million unused AstraZeneca doses would be returned to India.
“I also wish to once again put it on record that the vaccines have not expired, and that the expiry date of April 31 was established through our quality control processes- a wrong impression was created that the vaccines have expired- this is simply not true.
“We would also like to categorically refute the speculation in media that we have returned the stock to India- we have not.”
South Africa will give its doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to the African Union.
