The vagueness about the government’s Covid-19 vaccine strategy and its failure to secure sufficient doses within a reasonable time violates its obligations set out in the constitution, the DA has argued in court papers.
The opposition party on Friday lodged an urgent application in the Western Cape High Court seeking a declarator that government’s conduct in procuring vaccines and its preparation for the rollout violated several constitutional provisions, such as the right to access to health-care services.
The government has been under fire for failing to urgently order sufficient vaccine, leaving it scrambling while other countries have started inoculating their populations in the biggest global immunisation drive in history.
SA has the biggest recorded Covid-19 outbreak in Africa, with more than 1.4-million confirmed cases and almost 44,000 deaths.
The government has secured just over 40-million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, including 1.5-million doses of AstraZeneca’s shot procured from SII earmarked for health-care workers. The first 1-million are due to arrive on Monday, with 500,000 due for delivery later in the month.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize’s spokesperson Lwazi Manzi on Sunday said that SA had secured 20-million doses of vaccine from Pfizer, confirming a Sunday Times story. Manzi said the Pfizer vaccines were expected in the second quarter of 2021.
This comes after Mkhize told the Sunday Times at the weekend that the Pfizer vaccines were secured and awaiting manufacturers to submit final agreements with details of delivery dates and exact amounts.
Manzi said SA had secured, as publicised so far, 12-million vaccines from the international vaccine financing vehicle Covax, 9-million from Johnson & Johnson and now 20-million from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Pfizer on Sunday said it had allocated doses for SA and were continuing its discussions with the government.
"While we don't have anything to announce right now regarding our discussions with the SA government, we want to reiterate that Pfizer and BioNTech are firmly committed to supporting Covid-19 vaccine strategies on the continent and equitable access for Covid-19 vaccines for people around the world," it said.
The DA has been seeking clarity on government’s vaccine strategy and transparency on the acquisition.
Its court action comes after it sent a lawyer’s letter to Ramaphosa giving him seven days to provide details of government’s negotiations with vaccine suppliers, and to include the dates and minutes of all meetings. The party also wanted a breakdown of the budget for the acquisition and the rollout of the vaccines, covering public and private funds, donor funds and loans.
However, in its court papers, the DA said it received a response on behalf of the president in which it stated that government needed time to prepare a comprehensive response and that the one-week deadline would not be met.
“This indicates that the national government does not have a comprehensive and co-ordinated plan prepared,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said in the affidavit lodged in the application.
“If it did, it could simply have forwarded the document(s) on to the [DA’s] attorney.”
It was because of this that Steenhuisen said his party had no choice but to institute legal proceedings.
SA needs to vaccinate about 40-million people to reach herd immunity.
Steenhuisen said according to information provided on the vaccines secured for SA, at best, The vaccine by the Serum Institute which would allow 750,000 people to be vaccinated, 12-million people from the vaccines secured from the Covax facility and AU and the 9-million doses from J&J, left 18.25-million additional people, needed to reach herd immunity, without the prospect of a vaccine.
“This failure to make any provision for about 45% of the population that the national government has determined requires vaccination is patently unreasonable and infringes the requirements of section 27 of the constitution,” Steenhuisen said.
He also said there was “little basis for believing” that the best- case scenario set out was likely to materialise in the foreseeable future.
The DA did not count the Pfizer vaccine as this had not been made public by the time it lodged its papers.
Steenhuisen said there was no contingency plan in place if some of these fell through. This had implications for the national strategy as a whole, as it was not known how long the vaccines were effective.
Therefore, Steenhuisen said if 1.2-million health-care workers were vaccinated between April and June, but no other vaccines were delivered during the year, those workers may lose their immunity, or have it weakened, before the next phase of vaccination plan was even able to start.
“If the phases are out of sync, SA will never reach population immunity. This is particularly concerning in light of the rapidly increasing number of coronavirus strains, some of which may be resistant to, or unaffected by the vaccines that are currently available,” he said.
If the immunity required in phase two and three of the plan was lost or weakened before the balance of phase three was completed, population immunity would never be achieved.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.