SA paid more for COVID-19 vaccines: HJI

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa was forced to overpay for COVID-19 vaccines says the Health Justice Initiative and other stakeholders.  

The HJI won a court bid to access the covid vaccine contracts and details on  how the deals were negotiated.
The group has now  studied the contracts entered into at the height of the pandemic. They have found that the government paid 33 percent more than the African Union for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

South Africa also paid the the Serum Institute of India 2.5 times more for a generic version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine than the UK as well as15 percent more for J&J vaccines compared to European countries.

The HJI says big pharmaceutical companies bullied South Africa into agreeing to terms for vaccine contracts that were one-sided.