SA’s plan to donate 15-million coronavirus vaccines to other African countries has fallen flat, with little interest shown in last month’s offer from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
After scrambling last year to secure supplies, SA has moved from a shortage to a surfeit, and now has more than 21-million doses on hand, 9.6-million of which are Pfizer jabs that expire in the next four to five months.
With local demand for jabs flagging, Ramaphosa announced at the second international Covid-19 summit on May 12 that SA would donate 5-million Pfizer doses and 10-million Johnson & Johnson (J&J) doses to countries in the rest of Africa. But the response so far has been lacklustre.
“We have successfully donated 100,000 J&J doses to Kenya. But other than that, no-one wants vaccines. There is a glut,” said the health department’s deputy director-general for National Health Insurance, Nicholas Crisp, who is closely involved in the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
Many African countries are already in line to receive stocks from vaccine-sharing programme Covax, which has so many doses lined up already it recently said it has no immediate plans to buy stock from SA company Aspen Pharmacare.
Aspen bottles J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine for Africa and had intended to make its own copy of the shot, branded Aspenovax. But the dearth of orders from African governments and global agencies has left those plans hanging in the balance.
To further complicate matters, recipients of vaccines donated by SA are required to carry the associated logistical costs and have to assure vaccine manufacturers that they have no-fault compensation schemes in place, Crisp said.
The government has 21.53-million Covid-19 doses available, with 9.87-million Pfizer doses and 10.5-million J&J doses held in its central distributor and the balance already in the field, Crisp said.
SA has so far vaccinated only 49.8% of its population, with take-up particularly low among younger people. The weekly vaccination rate has plunged from a peak of 1.026-million in the week to August 29 to just 44,220 in the week to June 5.
On Monday, the government began providing a second booster shot to people over the age of 50, who had their first booster jab at least four months ago. Unlike the first booster rollout, which allowed people to have either a Pfizer or J&J shot as a booster, this time around people are being offered only a Pfizer jab.
Crisp said the decision to provide only Pfizer shots for the second booster rollout was informed by the fact that unlike Pfizer, J&J has not registered its vaccine as a booster, and SA has ample supplies of Pfizer doses that will shortly expire. A total of 4.8-million doses will expire on September 30, and another 4.8-million on October 31, he said.
No expired vaccines have been destroyed to date, said Crisp, as Pfizer extended the shelf life of its jab by three months shortly before the government planned to incinerate more than 92,000 doses that expired at the end of March. Wastage is running at about 1.5%, which was well below global standards, he said.
SA’s offer of a second booster to the over 50s is in line with US policy, but most other countries offering these “top-up” boosters have limited them to slightly older groups and vulnerable people. Canada and Israel, for example, offer second boosters to adults aged 60 and above, and immunocompromised people who are more vulnerable to severe Covid-19. The World Health Organisation has yet to make a recommendation on a fourth dose.
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