Cape Town - The Health Department is trapped in contracts with vaccine companies, still has to pay for vaccines it ordered years back and will receive these despite having more than enough stock and extremely low public demand for vaccinations.
The department currently has 8 641 170 Pfizer vaccines and only uses 30 420 doses a week on average. It has 10 119 000 J&J vaccines in stock but only administers 2 400 doses a week.
To date, no vaccines stored at central distributors have exceeded the manufacturers’ shelf life.
The department received 1 392 300 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and is still waiting to receive 10 607 700 doses that were paid for at an estimated R1390 351 239.
This emerged on Wednesday as the department briefed the Portfolio Committee on Health.
The department’s Dr Nicolas Crisp said they had a bigger challenge with Janssen as they had a commitment to still receive 11.4 million doses, with the balance of these needing to be paid for. “We have been looking at all options to mitigate the delivery for months now by delaying deliveries and trying to find donations.
No one in the world is really paying (for) vaccines at the moment so it’s hard to sell these elsewhere. The department of health initially requested deferral of the balance of the 11.4 million doses until demand for Johnson and Johnson vaccinations had increased.
Due to Janssen’s operational and approval issues in the initial phase of the vaccination programme and the subsequent waning vaccine demand for Covid-19 vaccines, the need for these additional 11.4 million doses no longer exists.
Attempts have been made to terminate agreements with CF and J&J to avoid receipt of vaccines,” said Crisp.
Crisp said the Covid-19 virus had not gone away.
“Despite all the uncertainties and challenges, at least 50 % of all adults have received at least one vaccination.
The public are still advised to vaccinate and to get boosters every 120 days while the Covid-19 virus is still in circulation.
“South Africa procured vaccines in a hostile global market and lives with the consequences of very one-sided contracts.
Public demand for vaccination is extremely low now that the perceived threat is low, so there are millions of excess doses of vaccines,” he said.
MPs were left shocked at the end of the presentation, with the EFFs Naledi Chirwa claiming reports within the department stated it was still procuring vaccines.
Health Minister Joe Phaahla said as the trials of the vaccines were ongoing at the end of 2020, they had discussions with various vaccine manufacturers who were looking for millions to be paid upfront and the vaccines were not even approved yet.
“We are not classified among the lowest income countries where facilities created by WHO provide vaccines free of charge.
We had to fork out money. At that stage the matter was to acquire as many vaccines as possible to cover what is required to acquire population immunity, which is defined as 70% of the population.
We had to make provision and fight with suppliers. Richer countries took first place in the queue and we were pushed to the back.
“That is why we have this committed currently.
It was always a projection of how the disease is going to progress, how long we will exist with the disease and the pressure was that we need to get the vaccines to cover as much of the population as possible.
Now the down part of it is that as soon as the severity of the disease went down the number of people taking vaccines slowed down and that is where we are at the moment.
The allegations that we have some other backhand deal with any of the companies are false. Whatever we do is public and we report to the Treasury, and to this committee and get audited by the AG in terms of purchases we make.”
Cape Times