US President Joe Biden has agreed to provide South Africa with some of the 500 million Pfizer doses the country is distributing globally, a report says.
This comes as South Africa said on Sunday it will pull two million of doses of the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) vaccine following contamination concerns at one of the US drugmaker’s sites.
Following a review of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) said in a statement that it had decided “not to release vaccine produced using the drug substance batches that were not suitable”.
Acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane confirmed that the vaccines would not be used, according to EWN.
South Africa is already struggling to roll out its inoculation programme as it enters a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday that Aspen Pharmacare, the local manufacturer of the J&J vaccines had assured him that it would beef up its capacity to start working on a new batch of Johnson & Johnson vaccines this week.
I welcome the support of US President @JoeBiden for a #TRIPSwaiver to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are urging leaders at the #G7 Summit to support a time-bound and limited waiver to expand the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines & medicinces. #G7UK #BetterAfricaBetterWorld pic.twitter.com/mb8VVmvvz5
— Cyril Ramaphosa ?? #StaySafe (@CyrilRamaphosa) June 12, 2021
“We have stored a lot of of our vaccination programme’s hope on J&J because it’s a one jab vaccine. So we’ve been waiting, but in the meantime, we’ve been using the other vaccines, particularly Pfizer and in my discussions with President Biden, we did say to him that we would like the doses that he is going to donate, also to be channelled to Africa… [and] South Africa.
“He agreed that he is going to do precisely that, as soon as possible, so we should be able to get some doses from that end and we will be able to get doses also from Europe – and we will then be able to have… a multi-vaccine doses type of situation,” Fin24 quoted Ramaphosa as saying.
Ramaphosa was speaking after the conclusion of the G7 meeting in Cornwall in the United Kingdom.
He was the only African leader invited as a guest to the G7 meeting.
The organisation of the world’s seven largest so-called advanced economies, consisted of the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Japan.
The White House said in a statement on Sunday that Biden and Ramaphosa met on the margins of the summit and “discussed the US-South Africa bilateral relationship and underscored the need to expand global Covid-19 vaccine supply and to co-operate on climate goals in Africa and on other bilateral and regional issues”.
PICTURE: Twitter/@CyrilRamaphosa
