By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize on Friday reported 151 deaths in South Africa due to Covid-19, with 72 of them recorded in the Free State.
The Eastern Cape reported 6 deaths, Gauteng 20, KwaZulu-Natal 2, Limpopo 17, Mpumalanga 4, North West 0, Northern Cape 15 and Western Cape 15, which brings the total to 55 719 deaths.
Provinces are continuing with their Covid-19 mortality audits, Mkhize said.
As of Friday the cumulative number of Covid-19 cases identified in South Africa is 1 628 335, a rise of 3 332 .
The cumulative recoveries now stand at 1 534 350 representing a recovery rate of 94,2%.
The total vaccinated under the Sisonke Programme is 480 665. These vaccinations were with the one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine and are therefore completed vaccinations, Mkhize said.
The total vaccinated in Phase Two as at 18.30 Friday was 161 717. These vaccinations were with the first dose of Pfizer vaccine.
Meanwhile US biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has spent the last year at home, but he’s not been idle. It’s given him the time to plot a way to help Africa produce its own vaccines.
ImmuntyBio in which he is a part-owner has signed a deal with the BioVac Institute, a state-backed South African vaccine company, to manufacture coronavirus doses from scratch in the country.
He’s also giving an initial R3 billion rand ($214 million) to the nation of his birth to help pass on technology for Covid-19 shots and other therapies that can be exported around the continent.
The source of his mission can be traced back almost half a century, when he left South Africa as a newly qualified physician to gain expertise he planned to bring back about five years later.
Born in Port Elizabeth, a coastal town recently renamed Gqeberha, to China-born parents, he studied in Johannesburg and the University of British Columbia before settling in Los Angeles.
“I underestimated the time it would take”, Soon-Shiong, 68, said in an interview this week from his home in California. “But not only have I been able to harvest the technology, I’ve been able to generate the technology.”
The interim decades have seen Soon-Shiong rack up a fortune following his invention of cancer drug Abraxane, and he has sold two firms for a combined $7.4 billion.
His net worth is now $15.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and his assets include the Los Angeles Times newspaper and a share of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, which he bought from former star player Magic Johnson.
There are fewer than 10 vaccine manufacturers in Africa, based across Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal and South Africa, and most of those carry out packaging and labelling rather than manufacturing.