The African country with the worst confirmed coronavirus outbreak is yet to provide clarity on how it plans to order vaccines, even as the global race to secure inoculations accelerates.
South Africa is hosting three trials, including for Johnson & Johnson and a partnership between AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, yet hasn’t announced a firm strategy to immunize a population that’s bracing for a potential resurgence of the pandemic. Almost 22,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the nation, the 14th-highest worldwide.
South Africa did confirm last week that it plans to sign up to Covax, a global initiative that strives to ensure that poorer countries have access to shots. The National Treasury has allocated 500 million rand ($33 million) toward the program and will need to find a further 4.5 billion rand to move to "the front of the queue,” Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said in an interview. That payment has yet to be made, according to Anban Pillay, deputy director general at the Department of Health. Still, that doesn’t mean South Africa will miss out on the first batch of available vaccines, he said.