South African Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize, during his parliamentary address on Thursday confirmed that the country will receive around one million COVID-19 vaccines from India, reports PTI.

The supplies will be carried out by the Pune-based Serum Institute this month, followed by the procurement of 500,000 doses in February.

“Today
we announce that South Africa will be receiving the first one million doses of
vaccine in January and another 500,000 in February from the Serum Institute of
India,” Mkhize said in his speech.

The minister also articulated that the vaccine will be first used to inoculate front-line healthcare workers.

Addressing the concerns related to corruption, as happened in case of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) due to involvement of middlemen in the acquisition, Mkhize assured the parliament that there would be
no room for such practices as the deal was closed directly by the government with the manufacturer.

The
government had come under fire in the past week for allegedly having neglected
to make payments on time to secure its part of the vaccines in the Covax consortium
of almost 200 countries.

“As recently as yesterday, our teams from the department of health as
well as the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) were
fine-tuning and aligning all the regulations and processes to ensure that there
are no unnecessary delays or impediments to activate this rollout.” he added.

The announcements comes after the South African government has recently come under fire by health experts, over delay in starting a programme of inoculation against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, South Africa recorded 22,000 infections and 844 deaths the other day as the country grapples with a second wave and a new variant of the virus.