Billionaire opens first full COVID-19 vaccine plant in South Africa

South Africa is hosting the first COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant on the continent. where jabs will be produced from start to finish.

The name of the company to do that is Nants-SA facility located in Cape Town.

The plant is "an initiative by the US-based, South African-born biotech billionaire Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong."

It aims to start producing the vaccines within a year and to make a billion doses annually by 2025, the BBC Africa LIVE page reported.

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa joined the billionaire at the launch of the facility. Ramphosa stressed that the facility is a gamechanger relative to Africa's vaccine sufficiency.

South Africa has other vaccine manufacturing companies but they are largely assembly points unlike the Nants-SA facility.