Staff Reporter.
South Africa finalised a deal to receive 20 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech SE from mid-April, allowing the country to prepare for a broad roll-out of inoculations after a series of setbacks.
The agreement had been delayed by contractual conditions demanded by Pfizer that aren’t in line with South Africa’s normal procurement policies, Anban Pillay, a deputy director-general in the Department of Health, said by text message Tuesday. Those have now been resolved.
The deal comes as a boost to a country where inoculations have been limited to just over 250,000 health workers taking part in a study by Johnson & Johnson.
That’s meant South Africa lags a number of its emerging-market peers as well as some other African countries.
Pfizer insisted that South Africa’s health and finance ministers personally sign the vaccine-supply pact, which includes indemnity clauses to protect the company against any future legal claims, according to correspondence between the ministers and confirmed by the National Treasury.
Government has been criticised for the slow pace of immunisations here on home soil, where only 269,000 health workers have gotten the jab under a Johnson & Johnson implementation trial.