LEADING experts in South Africa’s vaccine procurement strategy say while securing a COVID-19 vaccine is top of the country’s agenda, it is not a magic bullet that will end the pandemic.
“There is a general misunderstanding and we need to clarify that once the vaccines arrive on our doorstep, that is not the end of the epidemic.
“The first branches will go to protect healthcare workers and will have no effect on the population as such.
“Then there will be immunisation of the population and that is going to take a long time,” said Professor Barry Schoub, who is the Ministerial Advisory Committee chairperson on vaccine development.
Schoub, together with the Health Department Deputy Director General, Dr Anban Pillay, and South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) extramural unit researcher, Safura Abdool Karim, engaged in a panel discussion broadcast by the SABC on the COVID-19 vaccine outlook in 2021.
The panel
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