SA to pay more for jab than Europe

South Africa will pay $5.25 (about R77.60) per dose for 1.5 million shots of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII), a senior official said yesterday, more than some wealthier countries are paying.

Health department deputy director-general Anban Pillay said that SII’s price was based on SA’s status as an upper-middle-income country under a World Bank classification.

The price is higher than the $3 a dose that SA and other countries on the continent are due to pay for the same vaccine under an African Union (AU) arrangement, and the €2.5 (about R44.80) per dose European Union countries have agreed to pay.

SA is hosting clinical trials of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca in partnership with Oxford University, raising questions about the higher price it will be paying. Its public finances were already under huge strain before the pandemic and have deteriorated markedly since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The SII, one of several manufacturers making the AstraZeneca vaccine, declined to comment. AstraZeneca said it could not confirm pricing details and declined to comment further.

The SII doses are intended for SA’s front-line healthcare workers, who have been sorely stretched during a second wave of infections driven by a more infectious virus variant called 501Y.V2.

They are due to start arriving before the end of the month, before the AU doses, which become available from March, and shots secured via the Covax facility, a global distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organisation.