SA’s already stalled Covid-19 vaccination programme is being further held back by a critical shortage of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines, an aftermath of the problems the company’s factory in Baltimore, US, experienced in April.
While there are plenty of the two-dose Pfizer vaccines available, the shortage of J&J vaccines, which is expected to be overcome with the delivery of doses next month, has affected the vaccination programme in remote rural areas and other sites where a single dose is optimal, acting department of health director-general Nicholas Crisp said last week. “It has been a very difficult patch and we are obviously impacted by it and anxious,” he said.
Crisp was appointed acting director-general to replace Sandile Buthelezi, who went on two weeks leave to prepare answers after question were raised about the irregular R150m Digital Vibes contract. Buthelezi has now been placed on precautionary suspension.
Crisp said in an interview that while SA had expected to receive J&J vaccines from May, nothing had been received in May and June and 1,5m short expiry doses were received in July. “Since then it (delivery) has been very poor,” he said.
The problem was due to the contamination of ingredients at the Baltimore factory, which created a global backlog.
In quarter three to end-September SA was due to receive 9,1m J&J vaccines but this has not fully materialised. It is due to receive 19,1-million doses in the fourth quarter with just more than 5-million doses due in October. Crisp said if things went according to plan the situation would have improved by the first week of October.
SA expects to have received 31-million J&J doses by the end of the financial year but to date is far behind in achieving this target.
“We are not lacking vaccines. We have a lot of two-dose Pfizer vaccines. Plenty. But we don’t have plenty of Johnson & Johnson vaccines and that is a problem for us because there are communities that are very hard to get back to a second time,” Crisp said. “If we send mobiles out into deep rural areas, to go back a second time to try to find those people for a second Pfizer dose is expensive and time consuming and people move around. It is not ideal.
“We had always planned that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be used in those circumstances — pensioners in pay queues, people who are very, very mobile and difficult to get to, for example those found at taxi ranks and shopping malls.
“So ideally in those settings you want to have a single dose vaccine that you use. There are a lot of people who don’t want the Pfizer vaccine because of the inconvenience of coming back again for the second dose. We get reports that people are hanging back and waiting until we can tell them that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is widely available.”
Business Day reported last week that SA’s vaccination programme has stalled. Its average vaccination rate has dropped to its lowest level in more than a month, a trend that threatens to throw off course the government’s plan to inoculate 70% of the population by year end.
From Wednesday afternoon and ahead of the long weekend, the seven-day daily uptake in vaccinations fell to levels last seen in early August, when people aged 35 and older were allowed access to the jab. Allowing access to those over 18 caused a spike in the uptake of vaccinations over the past month, but there has been a slump in the past seven days.
While President Cyril Ramaphosa set a target of 300,000 daily doses, an average of 170,000 Covid-19 vaccines have been administered daily. Just more than 187,000 were administered on Wednesday after about 159,000 jabs were dispensed on Monday, the lowest number on a weekday since August 13, when 147,307 jabs were given.
About 30% or 16,8-million people have been vaccinated, according to health department statistics.
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