South Africa to spend $172 million on mass vaccination drive
South Africa plans to spend $712 million to vaccinate some 67% of its 60 million people to control the country’s COVID-19 battle and get the economy to rebound from its decline of 7.2% last year
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.South Africa plans to spend $712 million to vaccinate some 67% of its 60 million people to control the country s COVID-19 battle and get the economy to rebound from its decline of 7.2% last year.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the vaccination drive will help South Africa's economy, the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa, to rebound by 3.4% this year.
Mboweni announced the annual budget Wednesday, a day after the country’s unemployment rate reached 32.5%, according to the national statistics agency. The unemployment rate among the youth is more than 60%, a staggering figure in a country where more than 16 million people receive welfare grants.
South Africa’s economy was already in recession before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the government imposed a strict two-month lockdown. The shutdown and continuing restrictions caused a serious economic contraction in 2020. An estimated 2 million jobs have been lost, according to the country’s official statistics.
“With this framework we provide the budget for South Africa’s vaccination campaign. This campaign allows us to emerge from the restrictions to economic activity. We are allocating more than Rand 10 billion ($712 million) for the purchase and delivery of vaccines over the next two years," said Mboweni, delivering his budget to parliament.
Mboweni said the vaccines would be given to all South Africans free of charge and his budget did not have any tax hikes for businesses or individuals in order to stimulate the economic recovery.
Last week South Africa launched the first phase of its vaccination campaign in which it is inoculating an estimated 500,000 front-line health care workers with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, as a large-scale observational study. The J&J vaccine is authorized for testing purposes in South Africa but has not yet been approved for general use
South Africa had earlier planned to use the AstraZeneca vaccine and had purchased and received 1 million doses. But then a small, preliminary study showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided only 22% protection against mild to moderate disease caused by the COVID-19 variant now dominant in South Africa. South Africa quickly switched to the J&J vaccine which tests indicate provides 57% efficacy against mild to moderate disease caused by the variant here, and 85% protection against severe disease.
South Africa is selling its AstraZeneca vaccine doses to the African Union which will distribute them to countries on the continent where the variant is not a factor, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has announced.
South Africa is the country hardest hit by the pandemic in all of Africa, with a cumulative total of more than 1.5 million confirmed cases and nearly 50,000 deaths.
As the finance minister presented the budget, members of the South African Federation of Trade Unions staged a protest near parliament over growing inequality and looming job cuts in various sectors.
Police reportedly used stun grenades to disperse a crowd that attempted to make their way to parliament. Under the COVID-19 lockdown level 3 regulations, no political gatherings are allowed.