In a mark of the government’s commitment to its Covid-19 vaccination programme, Treasury has allocated an extra R2.34bn to purchase more doses and issued a stark warning that the slow pace of the rollout threatens SA’s economic recovery.
“Although SA has opened up free vaccinations to a large portion of its population, the take-up of vaccinations has been slow. As a result, future waves of the pandemic pose risks to communities and economic activity,” said Treasury in the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS), tabled in parliament on Thursday.
As of November 10, more than 23.5-million Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered in SA but only 32.9% of the adult population is fully vaccinated. SA is offering adults two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine or a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson jab. After an initially brisk take-off, every age cohort has seen a sharp drop in demand, posing a growing challenge to the government’s plans to protect the population against the next surge in cases and open up the economy.
The new money set aside to purchase vaccines adds to the R19.3bn already allocated by Treasury for vaccines over the medium-term expenditure framework. “Discussions are under way on how to respond to future waves of infection and continue the vaccination programme in 2022, including for younger groups and with booster doses if necessary,” said Treasury.
Treasury’s head of public finance, Mampho Modise, said it was essential to make provisions in the budget for potentially higher spending on vaccines, as SA could not afford to be caught unprepared. The February budget allocation for vaccine purchases was aimed at vaccinating adults, and did not make provision for children or booster shots.
SA’s vaccination programme got off to a slow start, due to bureaucratic bungling and a last-minute decision to scrap plans to roll out Astra Zeneca’s shot to healthcare workers after the emergence of the Beta variant. Healthcare workers were offered J&J’s vaccine in February in a study, because it had not at that stage been licensed, while vaccines became available to the public only in mid-May. Vaccines are free at the point of provision, and are currently being offered to everyone aged 12 and above.
The MTBPS lays bare the devastating effect of the pandemic, noting that almost 11,000 government officials died in the 2020/2021 financial year, almost double the average for the previous five years.
SA has registered more than 2.92-million cases and 89,300 deaths from Covid-19 since the first case was identified in SA on March 5 2020. However, experts estimate the true death toll is significantly higher, and the Medical Research Council’s latest weekly mortality report estimates there have been more than 269,380 excess natural deaths since May 6 2020. It has previously said at least 85% of these excess deaths are due to Covid-19, suggesting the true figure is about three time higher than those registered by the government.
Natural deaths are those caused by illness or disease, while term excess deaths refers to the number of deaths above a forecast range.
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