South Africa to get 1.5 million vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) with a million coming in January and the remainder the following month, the South African health ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry added during a statement that it had been working with the country’s health regulator SAHPRA to make sure there have been no delays with the rollout of the vaccines.
#COVID19SAVaccine | “As recently as yesterday, our teams from the Dept. of @HealthZA & the @SAHPRA1 were fine tuning and aligning all the regulations processes to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays or regulatory impediments to activate this roll
out.” – @DrZweliMkhize pic.twitter.com/btqEwERFDu— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) January 7, 2021
Yesterday, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who is on Sri Lanka visit, said Colombo has expressed interest in accessing vaccines from India.
Sri Lankan leadership had formally requested Indian assistance to get the Covid vaccine during meetings with Jaishankar in Colombo.
“We are now looking at post-Covid cooperation and I carry back with me Sri Lanka’s interest in accessing vaccines from India,” Jaishankar said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Kazakhstan Ambassador to India Yerlan Alimbayev said that his country is prepared to acquire Covid-19 vaccines from India and can discuss the matter with New Delhi.
“Kazakhstan is producing three vaccines, which are in 2nd and 3rd phase, there’s been no official dialogue with India, but we know India has two vaccines, which is good. We are ready to talk for ordering India’s vaccine after the approval of both countries,” the envoy said.
Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize announced on Thursday that the first 1 million doses will be delivered later this month from the Serum Institute of India, followed by an additional 500,000 doses in February.
South Africa is battling a dramatic spike in the number of COVID-19 cases that is quickly outstripping its first peak.
The country of 60 million people has reported by far the most cases of the coronavirus in Africa, with more than 1.1 million confirmed infections, including 31,368 deaths, representing more than 30% of all cases on the continent of 1.3 billion.
As of today, the total number of confirmed #COVID19 cases is 1 149 591, the total number of deaths is 31 368 and the total number of recoveries is 929 239. pic.twitter.com/ceWOvUlWyw
— Dr Zweli Mkhize (@DrZweliMkhize) January 6, 2021
South Africa isn’t the primary country on the 54-nation continent to announce a vaccine deal. Last month, Morocco announced it had ordered 65 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Chinas Sinopharm and Britain’s AstraZeneca.