SA’s ‘slow’ vaccine plan comes under fire

Government’s “slow” and “senseless” Covid-19 vaccination plan has come under a barrage of criticism from members of parliament during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s question answer session yesterday.

The president was fielding questions, among others, on the brand and quantity of the Covid-19 vaccines that government has procured thus far, the vaccine price tag, and vaccines approved by SA Health Products Regulatory Authority.

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) chief whip Floyd Shavambu said according to their estimate, it will cost a minimum of R50 billion to vaccinate 7% of the population and that Treasury had allocated R4.3 billion for the entire vaccine roll-out.

“The vaccine plan does not make any sense…You are saying you are going to vaccinate 41 million South Africans, when you have only allocated R4.3 billion?” he charged.

Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen asked Ramaphosa if he was going to take responsibility for the lives already lost to Covid-19, saying the ANC was occupied by its own battles.

He said other countries were nearly finished with their vaccination programme, while SA was yet to vaccinate a single private citizen and only managed to vaccinate just over 300 000 health workers in months.

“SA’s current ranking for Covid-19 vaccine administered is 33, not in the world but in Africa. That is after Sierra Leone, Sudan, Somalia and Zambia… Yes people are angry because you have failed them,” said Steenhuisen.

But the president kept his cool, despite the EFF heckling him, casting aspersions on his legitimacy after the so-called suspension by the suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule.

Ramaphosa said the delays were as a result of protracted negotiations with manufactures, drug availability, and ensuring that contracts with manufacturers were consistent with SA laws.

He said government will pull out all the stops to provide funding for the vaccination programme, even if it meant Finance Minister Tito Mboweni comes back to parliament to table a supplementary budget.

“We are not going to sacrifice the lives of people,” he said.

He said they have finalised a contract for the supply of 31 million doses of the J&J vaccines and that, as a continent, through the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, finalised an agreement for a 220 million doses for the rest of the continent.

He said from Pfizer they have an agreement for 20 million doses, with additional allocation from Covax of nearly 1.4 million Pfizer doses that arrived this week.