Shoprite to purchase COVID-19 vaccines for staff
Africa’s largest food retailer, Shoprite, has said that it is ready to buy COVID-19 vaccines so as to be able to quickly vaccinate most of it staff.
Speaking with with Bloomberg recently the Chief Executive Officer of Shoprite Holdings, Pieter Engelbrecht said that it is critical that its employees get vaccinated hence the private sector must be allowed to buy vaccines for it staff.
He went on to say that for the economy to quickly recover the government focus should be on ensuring the economy “can get started,”.
“Shoprite Holdings would certainly purchase for our employees to get those front-line people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Englebrecht said.
“There are 25 million customers through our stores every month, so one can understand how critical it is for our people to be vaccinated.”
“We would certainly purchase for our employees to get those front-line people vaccinated as quickly as possible,”.
Many African countries may not be able to effectively vaccinate their citizen due to the financial constraints and population.
Nigeria recently got about 4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, shipped via the COVAX Facility, a partnership between CEPI, Gavi, UNICEF and WHO.
The AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine was manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Mumbai.
South Africa so far has administered the vaccines on about 168,413 people and is using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine which is administered as a single dose.
South Africa has received 80,000 doses of this vaccine and in February, it got another one million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from India.
According to BBC the Progressive Health Forum, a group of leading medical experts in the country, said in January that: “The stunning reality is that [South Africa] has neither a secured vaccine supply nor a plan for mass inoculation in the foreseeable future that can withstand scrutiny,”
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Shoprite CEO lamented further that: “Rather than restrict trade, which causes injury to insult with unemployment and retrenchments,” the focus needs to be on reaching so-called herd immunity to ensure the economy “can get started,” .
Shoprite employs more than 140,000 people through the operation of 2,892 stores and a network of distribution centers across Africa. While its food stores have remained open throughout South Africa’s varying degrees of lockdown, trading at its liquor, furniture and household-goods outlets have been halted at times.
