Mkhize defends slow pace of roll-out

HEALTH Minister Zweli Mkhize has defended the slow pace of the vaccine roll-out, with the country lagging behind after less than 300 000 health-care workers having been vaccinated since the programme started in February.

MPs were not happy that after the initial target to vaccinate

1.2 million health workers, this number was reduced to 500 000, but to date just less than 300 000 have been given their jabs.

Members of the portfolio committee on health said yesterday if things continued at this rate, South Africa would not reach its target of vaccinating 40 million people by the year end. But Mkhize said they had all the vaccines from AstraZeneca but could not continue with it after it was established that the vaccine wasn’t effective against the 501Y. V2 variant.

South Africa had to urgently drop AstraZeneca and went for Johnson & Johnson.

The country suffered another blow this week when the US Food and Drug Authority (FDA) halted the J&J vaccine roll-out after six women who were given it had developed blood clots.

The SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) said yesterday it was investigating the matter. “The Sahpra has requested a pause in the implementation of the Sisonke study to enable it to review the relevant data and further updates will be communicated in due course.

It is envisaged that this process will take a few days,” said the regulatory body in a statement.

Mkhize said they wanted to speed up the roll-out of the vaccines but the scrapping of AstraZeneca caused delays.

They have since sold 1 million doses of AstraZeneca to the AU and Mkhize confirmed yesterday that the organisation paid South Africa $5.2 million (R75m).

“We need to accept the slowness of the pace, we had all the vaccines but we could not go ahead,” said Mkhize.

He said the number of people who will get vaccinated will increase in the next few months once they start receiving more shipments of Pfizer vaccines.

He said Pfizer has committed to send 325 000 doses every week from the beginning of the next month until the end of the month. This would increase to

636 000 doses a week from June.

Mkhize said Pfizer also said it would increase the number of doses sold to South Africa from 20 million to 30 million which would ensure that more people were vaccinated in a short space of time.

He also said J&J had confirmed the shipment of more doses.

“Honourable chair, J&J has also now formally confirmed that we will receive 1.1 million doses in the last week of April. I must also mention honourable members that in light of yesterday’s (Tuesday’s) announcement by the FDA and our subsequent announcement as a country to halt the J&J roll-out, it now calls for government to engage and make a determination jointly with J&J on the planned delivery schedule. Once we have received a clear decision in this regard we will advise this committee and the public at large. As we announced yesterday, this decision was taken as a precaution rather than an intention to completely withdraw the roll-out. We remain confident as government and are happy that of almost 300 000 people that have been vaccinated with the J&J vaccine in South Africa, we have not received any reports of adverse events that have been caused by this vaccine, including clots,” said Mkhize.