South African health officials were allegedly not responsive to requests from global pharmaceutical company Pfizer to discuss potential uptake of its COVID-19 vaccines for "months and months", News24 reports a leaked phone call with a senior Pfizer employee reveals. The leak comes as the health department continues to deny that it delayed in engaging in crucial discussions over vaccine deals early enough and, while some deals have been announced, not a single dose of any vaccine has yet arrived in the country.
"South Africa had started thinking about vaccines a long time ago, with our early meetings with some manufacturers in July 2020," a health department spokesperson is quoted as saying last week.
But, in the leaked recording, the Pfizer employee, whose identity is known, can be heard explaining to a Northern Cape businessman, Freeman Bhengu, that after the July 2020 meeting, the health department had not been responsive to requests from Pfizer. "We tried to speak to the (health) department for many, many months," the Pfizer employee said on 29 December.
South Africa is widely regarded as the country hardest hit by COVID-19 on the African continent, with more than 1.3m confirmed cases and a reported death toll of 37,000. Excess deaths research provides an estimated COVID-19 death toll at closer to 70,000.
"We did not sign bilateral agreements, given the uncertainties (effectiveness, safety, delivery date) that were associated with them. In September and October, this information was not yet available to us," a health department spokesperson is quoted in the report as saying.
[link url="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/pfizer-leak-sa-health-officials-didnt-respond-to-requests-for-months-and-months-to-talk-about-covid-19-vaccines-20210120"]Full News24 report[/link]