SOUTH Africa is negotiating with an African Union (AU) platform to buy COVID-19 vaccines for at least 10 million of its people, a senior health official said on Friday.
The country was provisionally allocated 12 million doses developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in an AU vaccine plan, but it was unclear how many vaccines it would seek to buy after it halted plans to use the AstraZeneca shot.
Sandile Buthelezi, Department of Health director-general, did not say which vaccines the country would order via the AU in comments to parliament.
South Africa has reported the most infections and deaths on the African continent, and suffered a severe second wave of cases driven by a more contagious variant of the coronavirus.
Like other African countries, it has lagged wealthier parts of the world in immunisations. So far, it has administered some 90,000 doses of J&J’s shot in
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