Η South Africa announced on Sunday, February 7, that temporarily suspends the Covid-19 vaccination program, which was set to begin in the coming days with one million doses of the vaccine developed by University of Oxford and the AstraZeneca, following a study revealing its “limited” effectiveness against the South African variant.
This study, conducted by the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and has not yet been peer-reviewed, states that The British vaccine provides “limited protection against mild forms of the disease caused by the South African variant in young adults.”.
“It's a temporary problem, we have to suspend vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine until we resolve it,” the health minister said on Sunday. Zoueli Mkize in an online press conference.
According to initial results, The vaccine is only effective against 22% in terms of mild forms of the virus. No results are yet available on its effectiveness against severe forms.
Having fallen behind in the global vaccination race, South Africa, officially the continent's hardest-hit country with more than 1.5 million cases and more than 46,000 deaths, received its first shipment of one million vaccines on Monday. A delivery of 500,000 additional doses is expected in February.
These are, in their entirety, AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines manufactured by Serum Institute of India. These first doses were intended primarily for the 1.2 million members of the healthcare workforce.
“Over the next four weeks, we will have the vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and of Pfizer“ said Mkize. Discussions are also underway with other laboratories, specifically with Moderna and the Russian laboratory that manufactures the vaccine Sputnik V, he added.
The South African minister recently announced that he has secured 20 million vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech.
The 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine received from South Africa, which will expire in April, will be stored until scientists provide clear guidance on their use, he clarified.
“The second generation of the vaccine to combat all variants of the virus will take longer to produce,” the professor has already warned. Salim Abdul Karim, epidemiologist and co-chair of the scientific committee at the South African Ministry of Health.
South Africa plans to vaccinate at least 67% of the population by the end of the year, which is almost 40 million people.
