On Monday, South Africa received their first shipment of the coronavirus vaccines thus paving the way to the first phase of inoculation in Africa’s worst-hit country.
Public broadcaster SABC showed President Cyril Ramaphosa at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International airport receiving one million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India.
500,000 more doses of the vaccine are expected later this month.
The key target in the first phase of vaccination is the inoculation of 1.2 million health workers.
Injections will start to be administered in about two weeks after the vaccines go through quarantine, regulatory and quality-control procedures.
With at least 1.45 million detected infections and more than 44,000 fatalities, South Africa has the highest number of cases and deaths in Africa.
The authorities plan to vaccinate at least 67 per cent of the population, or 40 million people, by year’s end.
-Advertisement-
The government, which has been accused of being slow to acquire Covid vaccines, announced at the weekend that it had secured an additional 20 million doses — this time of the Pfizer/BioNTech formula.
South Africa’s outbreak has been accelerated by a new variant said to be more contagious than the earlier strain of the virus.
We do everything possible to supply quality news and information to all our valuable readers day in, day out and we are committed to keep doing this.
Your kind donation will help our continuous research efforts.
-Advertisement-
-Want to get the news as it breaks?-
