Arthur Greene
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced on Sunday that South Africa had sold its 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, more than two months after purchasing them.
All 1.5 million doses have gone unused because a small clinical trial showed last month that the shot offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness caused by the dominant coronavirus variant.
This decision was made counter to the advice of many medical experts, who pointed out that the vaccine was likely to still be effective at preventing serious illness and death caused by the virus.
Earlier this month, professor Shabir Madhi, the principal investigator of the AstraZeneca vaccine trials in South Africa, said he was “mortified” by the government’s decision to suspend rollout.
Soon afterward, the government swiftly decided to sell the batch of vaccines to countries within the African Union (AU), in which South Africa’s dominant variant of the virus was not as prominent.
The media statement released by the Ministry of Health explains that in “the past weeks the Department has had to ensure that all member states identified by the AU vaccine acquisition team as recipients of the vaccines, are compliant and have obtained all regulatory approvals, permits and licences to roll out the vaccines in their respective countries.”
The statement adds that the first shipment of vaccines – the first 1 million doses that South Africa received – will be distributed to nine member states, while the remaining 500,000 will be sent to five other countries.
The statement does not specify which countries the vaccines will be sent to, nor does it mention how much these countries paid for the vaccines.
The statement did, however, “confirm that the full purchase amount was received by the Department on Monday last week.”
Picture source: @htTweets
