Thread by @miamalan

[Thread] 1. @aspenpharma is releasing 1.49 million #JnJ doses from its Gqeberha plant for use in SA today (Jul 26) — all these doses will be distributed to #VaccineRollOutSA sites. But when will they actually reach the sites?

2. Stravos Nicolaou from Aspen says this morning Aspen started to pack the 1.49 million #JnJ doses in special refrigerator containers which are temperature controlled. This is a delicate process and takes a while.

3. The pallets of #JnJ jabs will today be loaded into trucks and handed over to JnJ. Tomorrow, the jabs will be flown to OR Tambo airport, from where the vaccines will be transported to a warehouse in Midrand.

4. While the jabs are being transported to Midrand, samples of the #JnJ batch released by Aspen, will be transported to the National Control Lab in Bloemfontein where the samples will be quality tested. The testing takes a couple of days.

5. Once the NCL lab has cleared the samples, the #JnJ jabs will be transported from the Midrand warehouse to vaccine sites, says Aspen's Stravos Nicolaou. @healthza says the jabs will be at sites, ready for use, at the beginning of next week.

6. When will the 1.49 mil #JnJ jabs expire? Aspen says the expiry date = 3 mnths, but this only kicks in when the jabs = thawed (they're transported frozen at -20 °C). When which jabs = thawed, depends on each site. In short: they have normal expiry dates. bit.ly/3j4KeCL

7. The 1.5 mil #JnJ jabs we received a while ago, expire on Aug 11. Why do they have shorter expiry dates than the jabs we'll start using next week? Because we received them after they had already been thawed in the US, so the 3 months expiry date had already started in the US.

8. When will SA receive more #JnJ jabs from Aspen? Aspen says on August 2 it will release 600 000 more doses for use in SA.

9. Are the 1.49 mil doses that Aspen will release to #JnJ today (Jul 26), and the 600 000 it will release on Aug 2, part of the 17 million doses #CyrilRamaphosa said Aspen will produce for use in Africa over the next 3 months? Yes (confirmed by Aspen).

10. What happened to the 1 million #JnJ doses Aspen said it was going to release for use in SA in June? Aspen says the 1.49 million doses it’s releasing today (Jul 26) count towards that consignment.
bit.ly/3i2kCHd

11. How many #JnJ doses would SA have received received by Aug 2?
* 1.5 million (the doses which will expire on 11 Aug)
* 1.49 mill (the doses which are being released to JnJ 2day and which will be at sites next week)
* 600 000 (the Aug 2 batch from Aspen)
TOTAL: 3, 590, 000

12. How many doses will #JnJ owe us after Aug 2? We bought 31,2 million #JnJ doses, so JnJ will owe us:
31.2 million - 3, 590, 000 doses = 27, 610, 000 doses