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SA will make a payment of 500 million rand to help finance the production of vaccines that will be available through the facility, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said on Tuesday.
Mboweni said that another 4.5 billion rand might be needed to purchase vaccines in the future, without specifying how they would be spent. The government is trying to keep its options open as it evaluates which vaccine will be most locally effective and most affordable.
As an upper middle-income country, SA does not qualify for subsidized vaccines under COVAX, unlike many other African countries.
However, health activists said that countries in this group lack the diplomatic clout to shape the scheme in their favor, unlike wealthy nations that pay larger sums, leaving them at a double disadvantage.
SA had to weigh the benefits of signing up for the scheme versus agreeing to bilateral deals with major drug companies, or waiting to see which vaccines proved most effective in late-stage clinical trials, an official close to the vaccine discussions told Reuters. of the government.
The country has recorded the highest number of coronavirus infections on the African continent, with more than 772,000 confirmed cases and more than 21,000 deaths to date. It imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns in March to contain the coronavirus, exacerbating pre-existing economic woes.
Reuters
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