President Cyril Ramaphosa says phase two of the coronavirus vaccine rollout is expected to take place from the end of this month with the elderly and essential workers being among those who will get the jab.

He was speaking in a live address to the nation during which he announced that the country had entered alert level one of the lockdown.

The President says the country has secured vaccines from different manufacturers to ensure herd immunity.

Government aims to vaccinate over 40 million people before the end of 2021.

It has so far vaccinated over 67 000 healthcare workers in phase one of the nationwide programme.

President Ramaphosa says government will secure enough doses of vaccines to vaccinate the whole nation.

He says more vaccine sites will be activated during phase two of the rollout.

“We have recently signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson to secure 11 million doses. Of these doses, 2.8 million doses will be delivered in the second quarter and the rest spread throughout the year.

We have also secured 20 million doses from Pfizer, which will be delivered from the second quarter. Additionally, we have secured 12 million vaccine doses from the COVAX facility and are in the process of finalising our dose allocation from the African Union (AU),” he adds.

 Below is the live stream of Sunday night address: 

On Saturday, the country received a second batch of its Johnson and Johnson vaccine doses.

More on this is in the video below: