South Africa delays COVID vaccine deliveries as inoculations slow

By Reuters

FILE PHOTO: Dennis Malattji takes his coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine while a health worker looks on. REUTERS/Siphiwe SibekoREUTERS

South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.

“We have 158 days’ stock in the country at current use,” a spokesman for the health ministry said. “We have deferred some deliveries.”

They did not say when deliveries would now take place.

Stavros Nicolaou, chief executive of Aspen Pharmacare, which is packaging 25 million doses a month of J&J vaccines in South Africa, said most of the vaccines bound for South Africa would now go to the rest of the continent.

Nicolaou, who is also chairman of public health at business lobby Business for South Africa said deliveries would likely be deferred until the first quarter of next year.

Vaccines packaged at Aspen’s plant are part of the African Union’s agreement to buy 220 million doses from J&J.

The AU and J&J did not respond to an email seeking comment.

A Pfizer spokesperson said: “We remain adaptable to individual country’s vaccine requirements whilst continuing to meet our quarterly commitments as per the South Africa supply agreement.”

South Africa’s government has been seeking to boost the rate of daily administered doses.

“There is a fair amount of apathy and hesitancy,” said Shabir Madhi, who led the clinical study for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa.

To ramp up vaccinations, the government has launched pop-up vaccination centers and sought help from community leaders. It has also opened inoculations to children aged 12 to 17.

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