South Africa gets refund for COVID-19 vaccines |
The Serum Institute of India has fully refunded South Africa for the 500 thousand doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, which were not delivered to the country after it decided not to use the vaccine because it was not effective against a new variant of the virus. A million doses from the institute, which had already been delivered, have been sold on to other countries in the African Union. South Africa`s Health Minister Zweli Mkhize on 8th April said, "Treasury has confirmed that the Serum Institute of India has fully refunded us for the remaining 500 thousand doses that had not been delivered to South Africa and the money is already in our bank account. I want to clarify this quite clearly, as this now closes the matter of the AstraZeneca vaccine and also, we close it without incurring any fruitless and wasteful expenditure,". Mkhize said that there was a huge concern among South Africans that these vaccines would now be wasted but he wants to indicate that all of the AstraZeneca vaccines have been salvaged. Explaining why other nations in Africa could use the 500 thousand doses of the vaccine, which were rejected by South Africa, the minister said, "The difference between us and some of these countries is that they actually don`t have the same variant as what we have got and therefore they also don`t have evidence in their countries that the AstraZeneca would be a problem. So, in those countries, we go by the WHO guidelines that said it could be used, even if there are other variants in other countries,". Mkhize said South Africa would continue to support AstraZeneca`s efforts and would deal with them again when they could show that they had developed a vaccine with efficacy against the new variant in South Africa.
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