Government slammed over vaccine roll-out plan

POLITICAL parties and civil society organisations pressured the South African government to prematurely secure one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines – ignoring a directive by the World Health Organization (WHO) for all countries to receive the Covax vaccines at the same time.

This was the view of head of the advisory committee on Covid-19, Professor Karim Abdool Salim, yesterday during his preliminary account of the first anniversary of the death of the first victim of Covid-19 in the country.

The DA was one of the parties that lodged the legal action against President Cyril Ramaphosa in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in January. The party initially served Ramaphosa with a letter of demand, asking him to outline his roll-out plan for the vaccines within seven days or face legal action.

Ramaphosa failed to comply, and the DA approached the High Court for formal litigation but withdrew the legal action after Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced the pending arrival of the AstraZeneca vaccine when the country entered into a bilateral deal with the Indian government.

Salim was addressing health experts and the media about his views on Covid-19 in memory of the first casualty who died in Durban on March 5 last year.

During his address, Salim listed South Africa as one of the countries in the world which ignored the WHO’s orders and entered into a bilateral agreement with India to secure the AstraZeneca vaccines.

“The South African government is one of the countries that jumped the queues and entered into bilaterals despite orders by WHO for all countries to receive Covax vaccines at the same time.

“Was it worth it? I don’t know,” Salim said.

The epidemiologist said South Africa took the decision to secure those doses due to massive internal political pressure.

He said the WHO had instructed all countries to receive vaccines at the same time to help all of the countries to suppress the virus.

He stopped short of attacking the government under Ramaphosa but was quick to lodge a veiled attack on Western Cape Premier Alan Winde and his provincial executive for insisting that they would go it alone to obtain vaccines for their citizens.

Without mentioning the Western Cape province by name, Salim said those who wanted to follow that route wanted to treat their provincial boundaries as a “little island”.

He said lockdown measures, including the ban on the sale of alcohol, had significantly reduced infections and strain on health-care facilities.

Salim, however, conceded that he was initially opposed to the ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol.