BusinessLive reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa revealed on Sunday evening that SA has signed a deal with pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) that adds 2-million more doses to what was initially secured.

“We have recently signed an agreement with J&J to secure 11-million doses. Of these doses, 2.8-million doses will be delivered in the second quarter and the rest spread throughout the year,” Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation. This is up from the 9-million doses of J&J’s single shot vaccine that were originally secured. SA has also secured 20-million vaccine doses from Pfizer, which will be delivered from the second quarter of this year. “Additionally, we have secured 12-million vaccine doses from the Covax facility and are in the process of finalising our dose allocation from the AU,” Ramaphosa advised. He reported that in the 10 days since SA launched its coronavirus vaccination programme more than 67,000 health workers had been vaccinated. Ramaphosa also announced that the country would now move to the least restrictive level of the lockdown. SA was moved back to level 3 of the lockdown in December as the second wave of infections hit the country, but restrictions have been gradually lifted since then. “The few remaining restrictions under alert level 1 are meant to maintain low levels of infections and, in particular, to prevent super-spreading events,” Ramaphosa indicated.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Claudi Mailovich at BusinessLive

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