South Africa expects to reach over 40 million people during the second phase of its coronavirus vaccination programme that is kicks off in May, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced on Friday.
Mkhize said the South African authorities have secured over 51 million doses of vaccines under a programme that involves the vaccination of 1.5 million health care workers during a first phase that commenced in February.
“This means we can now move ahead with confidence as we finalise our plans for our mass rollout campaign,” Mkhize said.
He added: “We said the second phase should take us six months. We are therefore still sticking to that.”
He revealed that the second phase of the vaccination campaign is expected to end in October this year.
According to the minister, the country had secured the combined millions of jabs in agreements signed with various drug makers in the past few weeks with the aim of achieving a herd immunity of 40 million people in the country of 50 million-plus inhabitants.
Mkhize said some 31 million vaccines were from United States drug maker Johnson & Johnson, while 20 million doses would come from Pfizer, the newly-signed up provider from the US as well.
Apart from these vaccines, South Africa was also expecting to receive 1.2 million vaccines from the UN World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access programme, the minister said.
In spite of the acquisitions of the millions of drugs, Mkhize said his government was “still working hard to procure more jabs to ensure that those who may be unaccounted for, or undocumented, are also immunised to reach herd immunity.”
NM/jn/APA