President Cyril Ramaphosa address the nation family meeting

Photo: GCIS / Flickr

A South African vaccine? Ramaphosa planning for SA to create own jabs

President Ramaphosa said that he will reach out to SA’s scientific community to look into the possibility of developing vaccines in-house.

President Cyril Ramaphosa address the nation family meeting

Photo: GCIS / Flickr

President Cyril Ramaphosa has suggested that South Africa may join the global scientific community in developing COVID-19 vaccines to combat the pandemic both abroad and within the country’s borders while speaking during his reply to the debate on the State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday 18 February 2021. 

With Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines having been administered to healthcare workers and the President himself this week, Ramaphosa said that he will now enlist the expertise of South Africa’s foremost scientists to begin work to develop vaccines 

President reaches out to SA scientists for jab development  

Ramaphosa said that he impresses by the work that SA’s scientific community’s efforts during the COVID_19 pandemic and is now aiming his focus towards its sustained efforts to combat the pandemic. 

“Several South African scientists and researchers at a number of world-class institutions have been involved in the management of vaccine trials in the country,” he said, adding that the solution to the sustained threat of viral pandemic lies in SA’s ability to develop vaccines independently. 

“I have asked the Minister of Higher Education and Innovation to put together a team of scientists to begin the process of developing our own vaccines to deal with this and future pandemics,” he said. 

“We now live in an era where we pandemics may become more frequent and we must therefore be self-reliant in relation to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.”

He said that SA must “develop the scientific capabilities that our country has demonstrated to prepare for the future”.

‘Commercialisation of vaccines will lead to employment’  

Ramahosa said that Biovac – a partnership between government and the private sector – is using its vaccine storage and distribution infrastructure and capabilities to assist with the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to different vaccination centres nationwide.

He said that these capabilities to manage vaccine trials “did not come about by chance”. 

“They [members of the South African scientific community] have been developed over many years, mostly funded with public resources, working together with development partners locally and internationally,” he said. “Taken together, our national science and innovation system is a hugely valuable resource that we need to further nurture and develop.”

Ramaphosa said that the initiative will lead to improved job opportunities for some of South Africa unemployed. 

“We must support commercialisation of its products for domestic use and export, creating factories and manufacturing jobs,” he said.