By Prinesha Naidoo
(Bloomberg) – South Africa’s biggest business grouping will help develop private industry’s capacity to administer 160,000 coronavirus vaccinations a day, according to Business for South Africa.
Vaccines will be administered at pharmacies, employer premises and large-scale sites developed by medical-insurance providers and others, Martin Kingston, chairman of B4SA’s steering committee, said Friday in an online press conference. “No citizen will be denied,” he said.
South African financial-services group Discovery Ltd. previously said it has plans in place to vaccinate 3 million of its medical-insurance members against the coronavirus, with the capacity to inoculate 50,000 people a day.
The announcement was made as South Africa began asking people over the age of 60 to register for the vaccine. The country has been slow to roll out its vaccination program and has now had to pause the distribution of doses because of uncertainty about Johnson & Johnson inoculations.
South Africa vaccinated 292,623 health-care workers as of April 15.
B4SA’s members, which include Business Unity South Africa, Business Leadership South Africa, the Black Business Council and the Banking Association of South Africa, are working closely with the Department of Health to build capacity, Kingston said.
(Updates with details from first paragraph)
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