South Africa on Monday received a batch of 80,000 dosages of the US-made Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines to help it carry on its current vaccination programme that kicked off three weeks ago, the health ministry has announced.
According to the ministry, the government’s plan is to bring into the country some 80,000 vaccines a week from the US drug maker, whose dosages are said to offer better efficacy for its mutant variant.
Pretoria dumped one million bottles of its AstraZeneca vaccines a week after the batch’s arrival from India, opting for the US-designed drug shipped from its Belgian factory last month.
The government has since said that it would sell its unwanted AstraZeneca vaccines supplies to fellow African states through the African Union for onward distribution to them.
Over 140,000 of South Africa’s healthcare workers have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine during the vaccination programme which has targeted frontline workers before the free injections turn to those with comorbidities (underlying diseases), the ministry said.
South Africa has 1,529,420 confirmed coronavirus cases with a death toll of 51,326 since the disease broke out in March 2020, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize confirmed on Monday.
The World Health Organisation said there were 119,220,681 confirmed global cases, including 2,642,826 deaths since the outbreak of the disease in early 2020.
“As of 10 March 2021, a total of 300,002,228 vaccine doses have been administered,” the WHO said, adding that it had now added the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the list of safe and emergency use in all countries, and for its COVAX rollout – a facility designed to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries.
“Every new, safe and effective tool against Covid-19 is another step closer to controlling the pandemic. But the hope offered by these tools will not materialise unless they are made available to all people in all countries,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros added: “I urge governments and companies to live up to their commitments and to use all solutions at their disposal to ramp up production so that these tools become truly global public goods, available and affordable to all, and a shared solution to the global crisis.”
The J&J vaccine is the first to be listed by WHO as a single dose regimen, the agency said, joining the double-dose applied vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca for use in fighting Covid-19.
NM/jn/APA