Robbing Paul to Pay Peter

 Millions of Johnson & Johnson vaccines produced at its Aspen factory in South Africa will be exported to Europe, at the very time that Africa is grappling with its deadliest wave of Covid-19 infections yet.

Africa needs vaccines immediately. 

South Africa is still waiting to receive the overwhelming majority of the 31 million vaccine doses it ordered from Johnson & Johnson. It has administered only about two million Johnson & Johnson shots. That is a key reason that fewer than 7 percent of South Africans are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson has been exporting millions of doses that were bottled and packaged in South Africa for distribution in Europe, according to executives at Johnson & Johnson and the South African manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, as well as South African government export records.

Many Western countries have kept domestically manufactured doses for themselves. That wasn’t possible in South Africa because of an unusual stipulation in the contract the government signed this year with Johnson & Johnson. The confidential contract, examined by The New York Times, required South Africa to waive its right to impose export restrictions on vaccine doses.

Popo Maja, a spokesman for the South African health ministry, said, “The government was not given any choice. Sign contract or no vaccine.”

Critics say the shortfall in South Africa partly reflects a power imbalance between a giant company and a desperate country.

“The disproportionate amount of power that Johnson & Johnson has exercised is really concerning,” said Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer in South Africa. “It is harming our efforts to get speedy supplies into the system.”

Johnson & Johnson had always planned for some vaccines produced by Aspen to leave Africa, but it has never disclosed how many doses it was actually exporting. The export records show that Johnson & Johnson shipped 32 million doses in recent months, although that does not capture the full number that has left South Africa.

Glenda Gray, a South African scientist who helped lead Johnson & Johnson’s clinical trial there, said companies needed to prioritize sending doses to poorer countries that were involved in their production. “It’s like a country is making food for the world and sees its food being shipped off to high-resource settings while its citizens starve,” she said.

Covid Vaccines Produced in Africa Are Being Exported to Europe - The New York Times (nytimes.com)