The department of health says private medical aids will be charged more than R300 a shot to access the 51-million doses
of Covid-19 vaccines it has secured from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for the second phase of SA’s vaccine rollout, which starts on Monday.
That is more than double the $10 (about R140) health minister Zweli Mkhize previously told parliament each dose of the Pfizer and J&J vaccines was expected to cost.
The extra cost does not include a subsidy for non-medical aid members and is designed to cover costs related to logistics, storage, distribution, cash collection, administration and the development of the government’s electronic vaccine data system (EVDS), department deputy director-general Anban Pillay told Business Day.
Mkhize said on Sunday evening that phase 2 of SA’s vaccine rollout would start with the Pfizer shot at 87 sites today, which would be scaled up to 200 sites by the end of the week.
The health ministry hoped to get clarity from J&J on whether it could start administering its vaccine after about 15-million doses were contaminated at a US plant, forcing the US Food and Drug Administration to delay authorisation of its production lines.
While it has been previously suggested that private medical aids in SA might pay a premium for Covid-19 vaccines to subsidise the rollout to uninsured citizens, the idea was heavily criticised, as using member funds for non-members is not allowed by the Medical Schemes Act.
The 51-million procured vaccines are being stored and delivered to healthcare facilities by two distributors, state-linked Biovac and DSV, and will be available for private healthcare establishments once they open an account with the distributors, according to a letter by Sandile Buthelezi, director-general at the department of health.
“Private sector institutions wishing to procure the vaccine will be required to open new accounts with the distributors and agree to the trading terms and conditions and credit mandate of the NDoH [national department of health]," said Buthelezi. He added that private healthcare providers will have 90 days to settle their accounts for vaccine orders placed via the EVDS, which is intended to assist them with managing their cash flows.
The second stage of SA’s vaccine rollout, which is being administered in a phased manner according to a national prioritisation framework, begins today with citizens over the age of 60 eligible for inoculation at sites near their homes.
Phase 1 began on February 17 with the aim of vaccinating about 1.5-million healthcare workers, though only about 480,000 have received a jab.
According to a notice on medical aid scheme Discovery’s website, about 31-million of the 51-million procured vaccines are single-dose J&J shots, with the remaining 20-million being two-dose Pfizer jabs.
Discovery says SA will receive an additional 1.2-million vaccines from the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) programme “in the near future”.
Private medical schemes will be billed R308.48 a dose for the Pfizer vaccine plus VAT, which will take the total price to R354.75 a dose. The J&J vaccine will be billed at R286.96 plus VAT, for a total of R330 a dose.
Healthcare facilities will charge an additional R70 for administering each vaccine, confirming details on the EVDS, providing counselling, and covering the cost of vaccine waste and other expenditure.
For insured patients, the cost of administration will be paid in full by their medical schemes as this is a prescribed minimum benefit. Uninsured patients who are referred to a private healthcare providers by the EVDS will have the cost of the vaccine and the administration thereof covered by the department.
The cost of covering SA’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout has been a contentious issue, with Discovery previously estimating it would cost R7bn for medical schemes to fund vaccines for 7.1-million private members over the age of 18 as well as to subsidise an equal number of non-members.
“There is no cross-subsidy included in the price,” said Discovery CEO Ryan Noach. “There is a nominal allocation for the NDoH administrative cost recovery considering they have handled the entire process.
“The price also includes an allocation to the national indemnity fund, as required by the vaccine manufacturers.”
The department says the price of the Pfizer shot from the distributor will be R308.48 a dose excluding VAT, with a six-dose vial costing R1,850.88. The single-dose J&J vaccine will cost R286.96 a dose from the distributor excluding VAT, with a vial of five doses costing R1,434.80.
“On a global basis it’s a highly competitive price,” said Noach. “The NDoH deals are better than those reported by most developed countries.”
With Tamar Kahn
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