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Surprisingly, even now, with full knowledge of what we face and with dozens of countries around the world, including African nations, embarking on mass vaccination programs against Covid-19, it is harrowing to hear senior officials speak every again on the prospects for availability and usefulness of Covid-19 vaccines in South Africa.
The world is in the grip of a massive resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which SARSCoV-2, the coronavirus, appears to have produced a suspected variant so highly transmissible that even the most stringent mitigation attempts by intervention non-pharmaceutical. fails to contain the spread.
And more chillingly, the increased spread of the virus is generating a corresponding acceleration in the number of people infected and, by extension, exposing health systems even in the best-resourced countries to an overwhelming burden than each. they are more and more unable to cope.
Humanity is now facing the full force of the greatest public health emergency in modern history, with no sign that the force of the pandemic will diminish anytime soon. The only instrument humanity now has to contain the pandemic, effective vaccines, are available through an uneven and desperate race between nations. Even this hopeful intervention will bring no consolation in the short term.
It will take many months and enormous resources to vaccinate enough people to suppress the pandemic. And that’s the outlook if countries start mass inoculation right now, as some 40 countries have embarked.
Many more are preparing to receive the vaccine supply in the coming weeks to join the vaccination campaign. For the rest, primarily the poorest nations on the planet, COVAX’s global facility offers the only hope of receiving an adequate supply of vaccines sometime in the next six to nine months, only after which vaccination programs can begin. of months duration.
He does not believe that South Africa, against all reasonable expectations, is in this group, as it is not a poor country, despite the best efforts of a corrupt political class to secure that moniker. The staggering reality is that you don’t have a guaranteed vaccine supply and no plan for mass inoculation for the foreseeable future that can withstand scrutiny. This portends for this country the worst ravages of Covid-19 in the coming year.
This lack of foresight will bring us the consequences of the greatest human inability to protect the population since the AIDS pandemic, when we refuse to provide life-saving drugs by choice and against the desperate pleas of the horrified humanitarian and medical agencies here. . and abroad and directly caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. A high probability of this repeating itself is a monumental and unforgivable failure.
Both developed and developing nations appear to have proceeded with the first negotiations for future vaccine procurement several months ago without qualms. South African officials appear to have avoided such efforts, but their unique perceptions on the matter are unknown. Claims that SA knew better than many advanced nations and peers might have been dismissed as misplaced trust, but the consequences were not nearly as deadly.
Surprisingly, even now, with full knowledge of what we face and with dozens of countries around the world, including African nations, embarking on mass vaccination programs against Covid-19, it is distressing to hear senior officials speak every time. more on the prospects for availability and utility of Covid-19 vaccines in South Africa.
This position is inexplicable at best given the depth of knowledge available on efficacy and safety among several leading vaccine candidates that are being clinically tested and evaluated right here in South Africa. That is why the recent comment by senior officials on the government’s vaccination strategy in response to specific inquiries from the press, health experts and labor training and civil society, has sown great concern.
The unconvincing and defensive exposition of the department’s efforts, or to be precise, the lack of them, deepens suspicions and perhaps even confirms the absence of a coherent and composite vaccine procurement strategy.
This communication strategy bears the hallmark of frenzied cover-up and guilt avoidance. South African society has a fully justified expectation that, as a member of the G20 group of leading nations, most of which are in the process of implementing vaccination, this country will also imminently embark on its own vaccination program. There seems to be a public narrative to deliberately lower these expectations.
Public acknowledgment by officials that they did not believe it was wise to enter into bilateral negotiations with vaccine suppliers, because they could not ‘risk’ ordering vaccines if they did not work, is strikingly false. An Advanced Market Commitment does not require an advance payment for the vaccine and commits the buyer to purchase the vaccine only when available, at an agreed price and quantity.
It is a dangerous misconception, often exercised by arrogant local officials, to assume that a population will willingly believe any deliberate fiction presented to it. However, it will be even more worrying if the comments of these officials were made in ignorance of an elementary mechanism of advance purchase and prompts an urgent investigation into their suitability to manage such a critical portfolio.
The position of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines appointed last September suggests that it has been drawn into the department’s deceptive approach. Comments from the vaccine committee chairman align closely with comments from the DDG and other department officials who are supposed to lead the government’s vaccine procurement program. His warning that vaccines are not a silver bullet ”or that“ they do not end epidemics ”is frankly astonishing.
Several vaccine committee notices have been issued, but none have been published. The commission’s silence on this has been deafening. This suggests that the committee either agrees with this lack of transparency and either endorses a totally inappropriate vaccine procurement policy, or does not, but has been officially silenced.
This can only mean that responsible officials have lost the vaccine ship and a massive damage limitation exercise is underway to escape scrutiny and probable censure for this inexcusable flaw, which will be measured in thousands of lives lost, diseases in the tens of thousands, a broken healthcare system, and deep and continuing economic damage.
It is inconceivable that this was allowed to happen and it is to the discredit of the advisory committee that appears to have been included in this exercise. Its members have the capacity and experience to produce a transparent and accelerated vaccine procurement strategy, measured in weeks, not months. The fact that such a strategy does not exist puts them in the odious position of having to reassert their academic credibility and ethical composure. This dissonance deepens the suspicion that the committee is not free to do its job.
In a moment of existential threat, this incoherence in leading institutions is simply intolerable. The lack of a visible sense of urgency to vaccinate health workers is particularly concerning because they are at the highest risk of contracting Covid-19 and are the last resort for people in the terrifying eventuality of an infection. If such a critical sector has been neglected, what are the chances that the rest of the population will be vaccinated on time?
South Africans, mercilessly struck by the pandemic, have the unlimited right to demand immediate public disclosure of MAC vaccine warnings and a full description of the removal of any of its recommendations. There should be no more cover-up of the continuing failure to ensure sufficient vaccine supplies for South Africa’s needs. Overcoming the pandemic is far more urgent and infinitely more important than preserving political fortunes, bureaucratic careers, or ministerial appointments. The welfare of the people must always come first.
The President of the Republic, through his constitutional authority, will have to dispense with his admirable management of political consensus and brandish the ax against the members and officials of his administration responsible for this dangerous fiasco and immediately undertake the correction of the course that we have taken. It has been placed. Covid-19 leaves you no choice, because, as it has so cruelly demonstrated, it does not respect the banal affairs of the state or government. DM
Dr. Aslam Dasoo, Coordinator, Progressive Health Forum
Professor Glenda Gray, President of the SA Medical Research Council
Prof Guy Richards, Emeritus Professor of Intensive Care, Wits University
Prof Marc Mendelson, Head of Infectious Diseases and HIV, University of Cape Town
Dr. Fareed Abdullah, AIDS and TB Research, SA Medical Research Council
Prof. Francois Venter, Executive Director, New, Wits University
Professor James McIntyre, School of Public Health, University of Cape Town
Dr. Adrienne Wulfsohn, Specialist in Emergency Medicine, Hospital Inkosi Albert Luthuli
Professor Alex van den Heever, School of Governance, Wits University
(writing in a personal capacity and with the support of colleagues here and abroad).
