SA confirms scheme choice

South Africa is going with the Covax global Covid-19 vaccine distribution scheme, with a committed purchase for 10% of its population of 58 million, a senior health official said on Tuesday.

Khadija Jamaloodien, director of affordable medicines at the health department, said SA had not yet signed the commitment agreement to participate in Covax but would do so once officials had completed the necessary administrative processes.

She said the facility would give the country an early batch of vaccines with which to start protecting people.

“We have to be strategic about how we do this, because the intention is to cover a larger proportion of the population,” she said.

“Initially the strategy is to protect the vulnerable, the vulnerable includes our healthcare workers and then those which we will identify as priority groups.”

The decision followed earlier advice from a group of experts.

The government has publicly expressed support for Covax, but it had yet to say how much of the population it would seek to cover via the facility co-led by the World Health Organisation and whether it would go for the committed, rather than optional, purchase arrangement.

As an upper-middle-income country, SA does not qualify for subsidised vaccines under Covax, unlike many other African countries.

But health campaigners say countries in this bracket also lack the diplomatic weight to shape the scheme to their advantage, unlike rich nations paying bigger sums, leaving them at a double disadvantage. –