South Africa struggled to get the COVID vaccine after richer countries stockpiled dosesExBulletin

Audi Cornish, Host:

South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination program is showing signs of success. The country is currently immunizing all people over the age of 18. However, the journey is turbulent, revealing the global vaccine market affected by greed and self-interest. Reported by Eyder Peralta of NPR.

(Crosstalk)

EYDER PERALTA, Byline: People waiting for vaccination are sitting in the pew of the church facing the altar. Florence Burger is the nurse in charge of the center. She says that when people are vaccinated, they shuffle and go from pew to pew.

FLORENCE BERGER: People act like a musical chairs game.

Peralta: So like a pew.

Burger: Yeah, yeah.

Peralta: This vaccination center once served dozens of people. Now there are hundreds.

BERGER: Over the last two months I tell you-we’ve seen a really big increase. And now it’s over 400.

Peralta: South Africa is gaining momentum, with more than 200,000 people being vaccinated on some days, often accounting for half the dose in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it was difficult to reach this point. At the beginning of this pandemic, South Africa signed up for COVAX, a global effort to provide vaccines to poor countries. However, they found that the vaccine they received, AstraZeneca, was ineffective against the dominant mutants in South Africa. Government spokesman Mark van der Heever says there are facilities, nurses, but no vaccines.

MARK VAN DER HEEVER: I’m ready to start managing, but I couldn’t get it.

Peralta: South Africa then began producing Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but had to discard millions of vaccines due to contaminated components from the United States. Eventually the vaccines were shipped from the factory, but the president had to intervene to maintain them doses from exports to Europe. South Africa was able to get the vaccine by hustle. They ask for donations. They closed the deal to get the vaccine in exchange for conducting the study. At some point, they agreed to pay twice as much as the European countries were paying.

VAN DER HEEVER: The idea is to acquire artificial immunity around November-December 2021.

Peralta: South Africa is now a continental success story, hoping that the majority of its population will be vaccinated by the end of the year. However, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa vaccinate less than 3% of their population. And the best scenario is that 20% or 30% of the population will be vaccinated by the end of 2022. This should have been different.

MOSOKA FALLAH: I was too naive. I was very naive.

Peralta: It’s Mosoca Farah, chief scientist at the National Institute of Public Health in Liberia, who worked there during the Ebola epidemic.

Fara: And the reason I was naive was because I was involved in research on the Ebola vaccine.

Peralta: Shortly before COVID arrived, African countries were working with pharmaceutical giant Merck to use vaccines to stop another Ebola epidemic. They worked together to create a global stockpile of Ebola vaccine. Therefore, when COVID-19 hit, Farrer thought he would recover from where the world was interrupted. Instead, wealthy nations have begun stockpiling manufacturing materials. They bought many times the dose their population needed. And the global initiative to provide vaccines to poor countries collapsed when India was hit by delta variants and stopped shipping them. As Farah sees, greed and self-interest have won.

Fara: Countries are driven by extreme self-interest, so personal geography determines whether he lives or dies.

Peralta: At the vaccination site, I find Esther Plaatjies. She sits in one of the church’s pews. She has a vaccination card with a big smile. She is 70 years old with a heart problem. It took me two months to book her first shot. She says she feels blessed because she has been completely vaccinated.

ESTHER PLAATJIES: I’m really blessed, and I’m safe because there are a lot of people scared not to do it (ph).

Peralta: I ask her what she thinks about Americans who can take pictures at any pharmacy but don’t care.

PLAATJIES: I think they are stupid. They-I think they are blessed. And those who don’t take it think they are very irresponsible.

Peralta: Maybe she muses, they just don’t know how well they have it.

Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Cape Town, South Africa.

(Sound bite of little children’s song, “another day”)

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