JOHANNESBURG,
South Africa
South Africa is considering trading its doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and beginning its inoculation campaign with Johnson & Johnson shots instead, the health minister said.
The country, worst-hit
by the pandemic in Africa, has suspended its vaccine roll-out that was due to
begin with Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine this week after a study found the jab
failed to prevent mild and moderate illness caused by a variant discovered in South
Africa dubbed 501Y.V2.
The vaccination delay
has set back an ambitious plan to inoculate about 40 million people – 67
percent of the population – by the end of 2021.
“Given the outcomes of
the efficacy studies [the government] will continue with the planned phase one
vaccination using the Johnson & Johnson vaccines instead of the AstraZeneca
vaccine,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a press briefing on Wednesday.
“The Johnson &
Johnson vaccine has been proven effective against the 501Y.V2 variant.”
He did not say when
immunisation would begin.
Officials are also
deciding on the fate of more than one million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines
already secured from the Serum Institute of India (SII) and set to expire at
the end of April, though that date could potentially be adjusted.
Mkhize pointed at
several options, including selling or swapping the doses with countries
tackling the original coronavirus strain.
“Depending on their
advice, the vaccine will be swapped before the expiry date,” he said, adding
that “there are already countries who are asking to sell it to them”.
“Our scientists will
continue with further deliberations on the AstraZeneca vaccine use in South
Africa,” Mkhize explained.
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South Africa was slow to catch on to the global vaccine scramble and received its first jabs, one million AstraZeneca shots, only on February 1.
An additional 500,000
doses have been bought from the SII and are due to be delivered this month.
Mkhize said the
government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee should be able to give a considered
view on how to deal with the AstraZeneca vaccines in the next week or two,
adding that the government had also secured vaccine doses from Pfizer for
health workers.
Negotiations with
Moderna, China’s Sinopharm and over Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine are continuing.
Officials previously
said the country had secured nine million J&J single-dose shots, and Mkhize
said a deal could be finalised soon.
The J&J vaccine was
89 percent effective at preventing severe disease and 57 percent effective
against moderate to severe disease in the South African leg of a global trial.
Ninety-five percent of
infections observed in the local study were due to the 501Y.V2 variant first
identified late last year.
The 501Y.V2 variant has
alarmed health experts who have raised concerns about its ability to
potentially evade the immune response generated by prior exposure to the
coronavirus or vaccines.
South Africa’s
neighbour eSwatini, earlier known as Swaziland, also said on Tuesday that it
would not be using the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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