Mkhize says Gauteng’s vaccine roll-out begins on 17 May
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize was yesterday excited about his department’s readiness to roll out Covid-19 vaccine, which will begin in Gauteng on 17 May.
“We have managed to salvage the AstraZeneca situation. The one million doses we received were sold to the African Union and distributed to many African countries, who have now been able to access vaccines through this process.
“The finance department has confirmed that the Serum Institute of India has fully refunded us for the remaining 500 000 doses that had not yet been delivered and the funds are in our account.
“This therefore closes the matter, without incurring fruitless and wasteful expenditure, and we continue to engage AstraZeneca as they pursue their research and development for the next-generation vaccine, which can hopefully deal with the 501Y.V2 variant and other lineages.”
Mkhize added government was pleased with the progress of deal-making process of the Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines.
“We are happy that we have put this and the most arduous stages of the deal-making process with Pfizer and J&J behind us and that we have now secured a combined 51 million doses of vaccines – 31 million from J&J’s one-dose vaccine and 20 million from Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine.
“This means we can move ahead with confidence as we finalise the plans for our mass rollout campaign, which is officially due to begin at the conclusion of phase one on 17 May,” Mkhize said.
On Tuesday, the health department announced the final tranche of 200 000 Sisonke Protocol doses from J&J, which would lead to the conclusion of this protocol.
“Yesterday, we learned that there were no direct flights, but we expect this final batch to arrive early next week.
“This will not derail us from meeting our targets. We must continue to encourage and commend Professor Glenda Gray and her team at the [SA] Medical Research Council, along with all the department leadership and workforce that has ensured the success of this seminal initiative.”
The health minister said the payment processes for Pfizer was underway.
“In the same way we undertook an implementation study with J&J, we will also implement post-market surveillance amongst a limited cohort of healthcare workers.
“We cannot overstate how important these types of studies are. But these studies do not test the efficacy of the vaccine. They rather give us information on the broader impact of mass vaccination,” he said.
The minister added that sites had to be observed more than once to ensure their practicality.
“We also had to reassess the kind of sites that actually make sense for the experience of our people and change some criteria for a site deemed fit-for-purpose in various scenarios.
“The master facility list has been created as a platform that allows for registration of a potential sites and for critical analysis of the suitability of registered sites according to the needs of the areas that will be served.
“The provinces have identified thousands of sites which are now undergoing a process of verification.
“In the same way that we announced activated quarantine sites, we will also announce as vaccination sites are incrementally activated.”
Mkhize said the site revisions would help them achieve the vaccination targets.
“We believe that with these revisions, we can achieve the target of vaccinating approximately 250 000 to 270 000 citizens a day.”
51m is the number of vaccine doses Health Minister Zweli Mkhize says SA has secured.