Billionaire’s Covid-19 donation welcomed

THE announcement of a R3 billion pledge by biotech billionaire Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, 68, to help South Africa in the fight against Covid-19 was a welcome shot in the arm for Covid-weary South Africans this week.

This as Gauteng premier David Makhura confirmed yesterday, that the province had officially entered the third wave as infection numbers climbed steadily this week.

Born in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) Soon-Shiong went to Wits University and is the founder of Nantworks, a network of health-care, biotech and artificial intelligence start-ups, as well as owning the Los Angeles Times.

On Wednesday he announced during a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting that he would give $213 million (about R3 billion) to South Africa toward Covid-19 vaccine work.

During the virtual international meeting on equitable vaccine distribution co-chaired by the WHO,

Soon-Shiong said South Africa had “the science, the human capital and the capacity and the desire”, adding that “South Africa could catalyse the capacity building and self-sufficiency and most importantly the innovation for Africa and for vaccines”.

On Thursday the government applauded the R3bn commitment by Soon-Shiong which will see the transfer of the latest technology for producing vaccines and biological therapies to South Africa.

In a Cabinet statement, it said this would advance science in second generation vaccines which will address variants of the coronavirus, for which current vaccines may be less effective.

While the latest Covid technology was not detailed in the announcement, Professor Patrick Arbuthnot, director of the Wits Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit which has partnered with Biovac to develop skills capacity to produce vectored vaccines in South Africa, said yesterday: “Production of an ingestible adenovirus-based anti-Sars-CoV-2 vaccine … Dr SoonShiong’s technology is impressive and has big advantages over the injectable vaccines. Setting this up in South Africa would be very useful.”

Alex van den Heever, who chairs Social Systems Administration and Management Studies in the Wits School of Governance and is a health policy expert, also applauded it as a “positive move”. But he said there were obstacles to overcome in developing production.

Regarding governance, he said that would have to come from the donor.

Van den Heever said creating the capability to produce vaccines was not sufficient. “It depends on the actual cost of the product. If it is not low, it will not be viable,” he said, adding not much information was available.

Meanwhile, civil society groups and opposition parties have also welcomed the generous gesture by SoonShiong to assist South Africa, but have cautioned against possible corruption.

NPO Right2Know KwaZulu-Natal’s Burton Jaganathan said: “It’s brilliant news, but we must learn from our mistakes in the past where money was mismanaged and not used in the way it should have been. There will have to be proper oversight and monitoring.”