The decision to temporarily suspend the vaccination program against Covid-19, which was to start in the coming days with a million vaccines developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca, is explained by the consideration of a study revealing “limited effectiveness Against the South African variant. This study, carried out by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and not yet peer-reviewed, claims that the British vaccine offers “limited protection against moderate forms of the disease caused by the South African variant in young adults.” . Speaking at an online press conference, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said this is a “temporary problem”. “We need to suspend AstraZeneca vaccines until we resolve these issues,” he added. According to initial results, this vaccine is only 22% effective against moderate forms of the virus. No results are yet available on its effectiveness against severe forms.
A sudden stop But all is not lost
The 1.5 million AstraZeneca vaccines obtained by South Africa, which will expire in April, will be kept until scientists give clear indications on their use, he said. “The second generation of vaccines to fight against all the variants will take longer to produce,” has already warned Professor Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and co-chair of the scientific committee at the South African Ministry of Health. The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has been approved by several countries, but some have preferred to recommend it only for those under 65, due to insufficient data on older people.
Lagging behind in the global vaccine race, South Africa, officially the continent’s worst-hit country with more than 1.5 million cases and more than 46,000 deaths, received its first shipment of a million vaccines on Monday. A delivery of 500,000 additional doses is expected in February. These are all AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India. These first doses were intended primarily for the 1.2 million health personnel.
“In the next four weeks, we will have Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines”, wanted to reassure Mr. Mkhize. Discussions with other laboratories are also underway, in particular with Moderna and the Russian vaccine manufacturer Sputnik V, he added. The South African minister recently announced that he had reserved 20 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. South Africa plans to vaccinate at least 67% of the population by the end of the year, or around 40 million people.
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