South Africa is confident that it will meet its Covid-19 vaccination needs despite the on-going tough negotiations to procure the vaccines from a limited number of drug manufacturers in the world, Deputy President David Mabuza said on Friday.
Mabuza, who chairs the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Vaccines, said this during a virtual South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) plenary session in Pretoria.
The deputy president admitted that procuring the limited coronavirus vaccines from the manufacturers has been difficult due to worldwide demand.
He, however, said Health Minister Zweli Mkhize and his team were working hard to procure the vaccines to ensure that the government wrapped up contract negotiations with several drug makers, he said.
The shortage of global vaccine supplies has made the vaccination programme a challenge, he told the delegates.
“While the process of vaccine acquisition and procurement will require agility and speed to meet our domestic vaccination demands, we are confident of meeting our targeted projections based on negotiations currently underway to access vaccines through various institutional platforms,” Mabuza said.
He commended Mkhize and his team for a job well done as they continued to work under demanding circumstances to procure the drugs from the manufacturers apart from Johnson & Johnson, the country’s current vaccine supplier.
“In the end, we will overcome as a country,” the deputy president said.
He called on SANAC and other stakeholders to support the government’s Covid-19 vaccination programme aimed at curbing the spread of the pandemic and reduce deaths by vaccinating as much of the entire population as possible.
“Over and above non-pharmaceutical interventions such as continuous sanitisation of hands, social distancing and avoiding high spreader gatherings, the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will help us to reach population immunity so that more people are immune against the virus,” he pointed out.
He said the country’s vaccination plan had comprehensively mapped out storage, distribution and immunisation sites that would ensure equitable access to lifesaving vaccines by everyone irrespective of where they lived.
“The phases of the plan provide clear categorisation and prioritisation of various population groups to be targeted over the period of the vaccination process until the country achieves the desired population (herd) immunity,” Mabuza said.
NM/jn/APA