Faced with a glut of Covid-19 vaccines, the government has negotiated a reduction in its obligations to the international vaccine financing vehicle Covax, but has failed to convince Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson to scale back its orders, a senior health department official told parliament on Wednesday.
The value of the contracts with Pfizer and J&J remains secret due to the non-disclosure agreements the government was required to sign with them.
“SA procured vaccines in a hostile and competitive global market, and we live with the consequences of those very one-sided contracts. We are trying to manage it as best we can,” said the health department’s deputy director-general for National Health Insurance Nicholas Crisp, who is also in charge of the vaccine rollout.
SA has accumulated a massive stockpile of Covid-19 shots because the health department ordered enough doses to vaccinate the entire adult population, yet barely half of them have so far sought jabs. As of Wednesday, 20.4-million adults had received at least one dose, or just over half of the demographic, which stood at 40.4-million, according to Stats SA’s midyear estimates for 2022.
Dwindling cases and hospital admissions for Covid-19 has seen demand for the shots plummet. Health officials are now administering fewer than 30,000 doses a week compared with a seven-day peak of 417,000 in August 2021, according to the government’s Covid-19 vaccine tracker.
The government ordered 12-million shots from Covax, 30-million from Pfizer, and 31-million from J&J in 2021, which at the time was sufficient stock to provide 41-million people with a primary schedule (without boosters), said Crisp.
The health department has managed to trim its Covax obligations by offsetting a US government donation of 7.9-million Pfizer doses against the 12-million shots it ordered from the facility, reducing the outstanding amount of its original R1.39bn contract to R71m, Crisp said. It has so far received 1.392-million Pfizer doses from Covax.
Contractual obligations
However, it remains contractually bound for the vaccines it ordered from Pfizer and J&J, said Crisp. The health department has 8.6-million Pfizer doses and more than 10-million J&J jabs on hand, he said.
The department was reviewing “all plausible options” for dealing with SA’s Covid-19 vaccine stockpile before they expired, said Crisp. “No-one is buying vaccines, so it is very hard to sell them elsewhere. We are looking at donations, too,” he said.
Many poorer countries can’t accept donations as they are unable to fulfil vaccine manufacturer’s requirements that they establish a no-fault compensation scheme for vaccine injuries, he said. The situation is even more challenging for Pfizer shots, which require ultra-cold storage.
Private-sector vaccination sites have so far submitted claims running to R2bn for shots administered to people who did not belong to medical schemes, said Crisp. R992 million had been paid by the end of August and R1.08bn was due by the end of September, he added.
Medical schemes have to date paid the government R1.3bn for members who had received their shots at public health facilities. “This is an ongoing process that will run for several months as we finish the reconciliation,” Crisp said.
kahnt@businesslive.co.za