Health Minister, Dr
Speaking in
"We can now guarantee that the number of people that will be vaccinated with
The Minister said the first batch of over 300 000 vials of these shots are expected to arrive in the country on
However, he said both the
"The agreements state that down payments that have been made in advance by the department shall not be refundable by the manufacturer to us in any circumstances.
"This is another onerous term that we had to settle for," the Minister told the committee.
Meanwhile, he said government has received an email from J&J, stating that they will not sign off the 20 million doses until they receive a letter from the Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, expressing support for the local investment that they made in
"We've been taken aback by this, as there are clauses in the agreement that express this support and acknowledge that this production will not just be limited to
Last month, President
"Our support for this production in our country was publicly made... J&J said if we don't give them this letter, we're making their global leadership nervous and to them, we've not shown our political will to support them," said Mkhize.
He acknowledged that government has had to navigate through difficult and sometimes unreasonable terms.
"I can also assure that we haven't been sleeping on the job," Mkhize said.
J&J vaccine suspended
Meanwhile,
This comes after the
However, a final decision on the suspension is expected in the next few days.
Addressing media on Tuesday night, Mkhize was confident that in an unlikely event that the J&J rollout is completely halted, the country would still be able to proceed with phase two of the vaccination programme.
"We are confident that the rollout of
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