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By Reuters 
3h ago
Johannesburg, South Africa, which has yet to receive its first doses of coronavirus vaccine, will receive 9 million from Johnson & Johnson, the Health Ministry said Monday.
The government is trying to secure enough Covid-19 vaccines after healthcare workers and scientists criticized it for not moving fast enough to vaccinate citizens.
The country has recorded more than 1.3 million infections and more than 37,000 virus-related deaths, the majority in Africa.
Health Ministry spokeswoman Lwazi Manzi did not specify when the doses of J&J might be available. She was confirming a report in the Business Day newspaper.
The J&J doses bring the total number of doses South Africa can receive to more than 30 million.
J&J did not respond to an email seeking comment. The chief scientific officer of the US healthcare company said last week that it was on track to launch its single-shot coronavirus vaccine in March and hopes to have clear data on its effectiveness by the end of this month or earlier. February.
South Africa should also receive around 12 million doses from the Covax global vaccine delivery scheme co-led by the World Health Organization, around 12 million from an African Union (AU) agreement and 1.5 million from the Serum Institute of India which is manufacturing AstraZeneca. shots.
The calculation of the AU allocation is based on South Africa’s share of the continent’s population.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, president of the AU, said last week that the organization had secured 270 million doses of vaccines and that they would be distributed based on the size of the countries’ population.
The Health Ministry said this month that it was in advanced negotiations with J&J.
Local pharmaceutical company Aspen will make J&J injections, but unless a firm agreement is signed with the South African government, all those doses will be exported.
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