Monday | February 1, 2021
Sourced from Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest manufacturer, South Africa (SA) will receive the first consignment of vaccines produced by AstraZeneca.
On Sunday Jan. 31, the batch was airlifted from Pune, India, and is expected to reach its destination on Monday, Feb. 1.
Upon arrival, SA President Cyril Ramaphosa, his Deputy David. D. Mabuza, Minister of Health, Dr. Zweli Mkhize and other dignitaries will queue up to welcome the unprecedented one million vaccines.
Dr. Mkhize said it will take 10 to 14 days before the vaccines are distributed. In the interim, inspection will be carried out to determine whether the right quantities have been delivered and possible contamination. For all intents and purposes, samples will be taken to a national laboratory in Bloemfontein for quality assurance.
The vaccine is the first of its kind to enter South Africa since the Covid-19 outbreak in March, 2020. Scores of people have been and continue to be infected by this highly contagious epidemic.
To this end, a total number of 1, 453, 761 Covid-19 cases have been recorded and 44, 164 deaths confirmed to date in SA. In the past 24 hours, 4, 525 new infections were identified and 213 coronavirus related deaths reported.
The government will soon embark on a long-winded campaign to vaccinate people in SA in order to ameliorate the fatal blow caused by the pandemic. The country has ordered millions of vaccines from different pharmaceutical firms which will touch down as months roll on.
While it may be easy to vaccinate health workers, it may get complicated when the inoculation of the greater majority of people have to receive vaccines, Prof. Barry Schoub, a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on coronavirus vaccines, opined when speaking to Power 98.7 (a Johannesburg-based commercial radio station) on Monday morning.
Of major concern is that coronavirus has been mutating with devastating effects, forcing manufacturers to work on modifying a booster version of vaccines to counter Covid-19 variant(s).