Private sector wants in on SA’s vaccine rollout

A growing frustration by business was clear when Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said SA’s private sector should be allowed to secure vaccines in a bid to speed up the rollout.

He told BizTech that Shoprite “would certainly purchase for our employees to get those frontline people vaccinated as quickly as possible.”

“There are 25 million customers through our stores every month, so one can understand how critical it is for our people to be vaccinated.”

Minerals Council of SA spokesperson Charmane Russell said they were disappointed the vaccine rollout had not yet begun “notwithstanding that some healthcare workers are being vaccinated under the Sisonke programme”.

“A full scale vaccination programme is a national imperative to achieve herd immunity, so we can save lives and livelihoods.

“We remain supportive of government's rollout plans. The industry has previously made it known that it would be willing to contribute funding to vaccine procurement if needed.

“More than that, it has indicated that it would avail its health care resources and infrastructure to the vaccination programme. By our calculations we could vaccinate between 60,000 and 80,000 people a day, and could vaccinate at least 2.5 to 3 million people — employees, family members and mining communities,” said Russell.

It’s a challenging time for everyone — we need to work as a coherent business, labour, community and government. 

—  Mzila Mthenjane, executive head of stakeholder affairs at Exxaro Resources

Mzila Mthenjane, executive head of stakeholder affairs at Exxaro Resources, said the company would be working through the Minerals Council of SA in support of the government programme to rollout the vaccines.

“It’s important to remain aligned with the government, and there needs to be a coherent approach in supporting the government to make sure health workers in the public and private sectors are provided for. Because in mining we have health facilities — we have health workers. We have testing facilities for both our staff and the public and we will be following the government programme.

“Obviously there is the issue of overhanging employees who have medical aid and who may be provided with the vaccine, but the industry lobby councils — like the Minerals Council of SA — are working to make sure the family members of those workers will also receive cover.

“It’s a challenging time for everyone — we need to work as a coherent business, labour force, community and government. If we can maintain this coherent approach then we can prevent a devastating third wave as we’ve seen in European countries.”

James Wellsted, spokesperson for miner Sibanye Stillwater, says the group has offered its services to government to assist with the rollout of vaccines.

“We’ve got 44 health clinics in three provinces that basically service our mines and provide health and wellness services to our employees on the mines and the surrounding communities. We have worked out and we’ve said it before, we can vaccinate about 18,000 people a day. We believe we can assist government in the rollout and we can vaccinate on our doorstep communities, families and employees up to about 250,000 people.”

Wellsted says that at this stage B4SA, of which Sibanye forms a part, is “still engaging with the government to try to define exactly what role business is going to play”.

Boyce Lloyd, CEO of liquor group KWV, said that for smaller companies such as his, which employs 500 people, it is easier to practice social distancing than miners or the hospitality industry.

“If you are in the mining sector or hospitality industry, it is very difficult to do this and those industries do have a need for an acceleration in rollout.”

But he said there has to be a prioritisation of who “gets the vaccine at the moment and absolutely the medical, emergency services and elderly need to be prioritised”.

We have been trying to get our own vaccines for staff and we are really keen to, but unfortunately there is a lot of red tape.

—  Evert Potgieter, director of risk management Astral Foods

He said the debate about whether the private sector should be allowed to buy vaccines, should only come up once people who fall under the priority category have been vaccinated and “there is a surplus of vaccines”.

MTN executive for corporate affairs Jacqui O’Sullivan said the company had not altered its original Covid-19 protocols in stores and it would continue to maintain those “for the benefit of our employees and our customers”.

“MTN has already indicated to its employees that it will cover the costs for the vaccine for employees and their immediate families — should their existing medical aid plans not do so.”

Vodacom declined to comment.

Evert Potgieter, director of risk management Astral Foods, said the company has been trying to get hold of its own vaccines for staff.

“We have been trying to do that and we are really keen to, but unfortunately there is a lot of red tape. We have about 13,500 employees who have been working since day one, and I believe we owe it to our staff to get them access to the vaccines.

“Perhaps frustrated is too harsh a word, but I would say we are a bit frustrated by the slowness of the delivery of vaccines. If given the opportunity to buy them ourselves then we would. But we understand why government needs to control the rollout, to ensure that everyone gets the vaccine.

“If granted, we would like to take it further to ensure the families of our staff are also vaccinated. We have healthcare providers who are able to administer the vaccines to our staff.

“We are concerned about the slowness of the rollout, especially because of the long weekends and Easter coming up, which could potentially bring the third wave forward.”

Stavros Nicolai, speaking in his capacity as chair of the Pharmaceutical Task Group, which represents local and international pharma industry, said: “We’re in a difficult position in that we will be producing a vaccine at some point in time.

“We’ve had the discussion, and the feeling was that there certainly were employees in the profession who do come face to face with the public and who will be exposed. Employees for example who fit medical devices — they need to be in the theatre during the operations. Many travel from hospital to hospital.

“We don’t think pharmacists should be first in the queue, but in a case where they have a potential for exposure that should be focused on — not front of the queue but for those who do carry a higher risk and move about — then a case can be made.

“I think the first port of call in phase two is to vaccinate the elderly. There is enough evidence which demonstrates the elderly are at a higher risk. This doesn’t mean an overhauling, but rather a refining of the plans for phase two.”