Botswana’s government has criticised the COVAX facility over the arrival of vaccines to the country.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi said this week that he wants the government to acquire Covid vaccines directly from manufacturers as a result of the ongoing problems with COVAX.

Earlier this year, thousands of vaccine doses were missing from one of the COVAX consignments arriving in Botswana, which according to sources totalled 10,000 AstraZeneca vaccines.

The missing vaccine doses were subsequently confirmed by the country’s Assistant Minister of Health and Wellness, Setlhomo Lelatisitswe, whilst President Masisi recently called the COVAX facility a scam.

Lelatisitswe stated: “When we went to check on the consignment after it arrived, we realised that doses were missing. We engaged them and they claimed that they had delivered enough doses.”

He went on to say that the missing vaccine doses are part of the reason why some senior citizens haven’t yet received their second AstraZeneca doses: “The number of people who have not received their second AstraZeneca dose is slightly the same number of doses that we are missing.”

The assistant health minister added that the delays in the arrival of vaccines from the COVAX facility resulted in the Ministry of Health offering Moderna and Pfizer vaccines as second doses.

As of 23 July, over 200,000 people had received their first coronavirus vaccine dose, whilst 121,518 had been fully vaccinated.
“COVAX keeps disappointing us,” said Lelatisitswe. “We wish to state that COVAX is only one of the many platforms we have used to buy COVID-19 vaccines.

So far we have bought enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire population. Our biggest challenge right now is the arrival of these vaccines.”

He added that over 500,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Sinovac and Moderna vaccines are anticipated to arrive between August and September.