South Africa vaccinates less than 40 000 as roll-out begins

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South Africa vaccinates less than 40 000 as roll-out begins

7:59 CAT | 19 May 2021

Health workers register patients at a Covid-19 testing station Johannesburg. [Image: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg]

South Africa vaccinated 39 371 people over two days as its broad rollout of Covid-19 vaccines began, the National Department of Health said.

The slow-pace of the vaccination programme, which is initially using the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, highlights the challenges the country is facing in reaching its aim of the inoculating the 40 million it needs to reach so-called herd immunity. The government has said the programme will pick up pace.

While almost 480 000 South African health workers have been inoculated as part of trial with single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines the government has come under criticism for delays to the broad rollout.

Initially a failure to pre-order vaccines slowed the programme, which was then set back by a study that showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa.

Source: Bloomberg