South Africa to store COVID-19 vaccines from India at secret place to prevent theft, black marketing

JOHANNESBURG: The South African government will store the 1.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that it will receive from India in the next few weeks at a secret place because of the risk of theft for sale at black market prices, according to a media report.

"The vaccines are a highly-rated commodity once they're stolen and reach the black market," Department of Health spokesperson Popo Maja told the weekly City Press on Sunday, adding that if this occurs, there is a risk that the prices of these illegally-obtained vaccines will be hiked significantly.

"There will be a central place where the consignment will be stored and from where we will distribute it to hospital and clinic pharmacies that can store it," Maja said.

"There's a security issue too because countries which have already begun rolling out the vaccines have warned us that there is a huge theft of it, so we may not even disclose where it is being centrally stored," Maja said.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said during an address to the South African parliament last week, that the government had secured 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from India as South Africa battles exponentially rising infections and deaths daily amid a second wave of the coronavirus and a new variant of the virus.

Overnight on Sunday there were over 21,600 new infections and 399 more deaths.

A million doses are expected from India before the end of this month and a further 500,000 in February, with healthcare workers in both government and private facilities being prioritised for vaccination.

Mkhize also allayed concerns that the vaccine to be supplied by India had not yet been approved by South African regulators.

He said teams from the department of health as well as the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) were fine-tuning and aligning all the regulations and processes to ensure that there were no unnecessary delays or impediments to rollout the vaccine.

"We are all happy that the Serum Institute of India and the AstraZeneca vaccine have already been approved by various regulators and is being rolled out in other countries," he said.

Addressing concerns that corruption might make the process costly, as had been the case in the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to health workers for months during the COVID-19 lockdown, Mkhize gave an assurance that there would be no corruption as the deal was being done directly between the government and the manufacturer, unlike the middlemen used in the PPE acquisitions who had exploited the situation.

Africa passed the milestone of 3 million confirmed cases COVID-19 on Sunday, including more than 72,000 deaths, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

South Africa, with more than 1.2 million reported cases, including 32,824 deaths, accounts for more than 30% of the total for the continent of 54 countries and 1.3 billion people.

The high proportion of cases in South Africa, could be because the country carries out more tests than many other African countries.

South Africa is battling a resurgence of the disease, driven by a variant of the virus that is more contagious and spreading quickly.

Many hospitals are reaching capacity, yet the numbers of those infected are expected to continue rising, according to health experts.

South Africa's seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 19.86 new cases per 100,000 people on December 26 to 30.18 new cases per 100,000 people on January 9, according to Johns Hopkins University.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will meet with his Cabinet this week to consider if further restrictions should be taken to slow the spread of the disease, while balancing the need to encourage economic growth.

The government has already reimposed measures including a ban on the sales of liquor, the closure of bars and restricting the number of people who can attend public gatherings.

Later in January, South Africa expects to receive its first delivery of a vaccine, 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot.

The government said its first priority will be to inoculate the country's 1.25 million health workers.

It expects to receive more vaccines through the WHO's COVAX initiative in April.

South African health minister Zweli Mkhize said that his aim is to see 67% of the country's 60 million people vaccinated by the end of 2021, a goal that many health experts say is laudable but unrealistic