South Africa’s decision to halt the massive rollout of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after a study found it reduced protection against the South African variety is “only a temporary delay” and includes a new rollout strategy, says the head of South African Covid. -19 advisory committee said Monday.
“This is only a temporary delay, but the way we’re going to roll it out will be different in that we’re taking a two-step approach,” epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim told Times Radio.
During a briefing on Sunday, Karim said that “if the vaccine proves to be ineffective in reducing hospital admissions, we should offer those individuals another effective vaccine – either a booster of that vaccine … or to give them a different vaccine. to give. So we can still continue with our rollout, but we have to do it … wisely by taking a step-by-step approach. “
He stressed that the reason for this approach is that “we don’t really know the answer to serious illness”.
Early data released Sunday suggest that two doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine provided only “minimal protection” against mild and moderate Covid-19 of the variant first identified in South Africa.
Viral neutralization against variant, called B.1.351, was “significantly reduced” compared to the previous coronavirus strain, the University of Oxford said in a press release. The efficacy of the vaccine against severe Covid-19, hospitalization and death has not been evaluated.
Karim went on to explain on Monday that South Africa will not conduct a massive rollout of the vaccine until they are “certain” that it will reduce hospitalization in 100,000 people infected with the variant first identified in the country.
The first step is to vaccinate probably about 100,000 people and then assess what the hospital admissions are. And once we are confident that hospital admissions are low with the AstraZeneca vaccine, we will move on to roll out the remaining million doses we have, ”said Karim.
“If it turns out that hospital admissions are not as low as we’d like, we would of course stop and stop rolling AstraZeneca – so that’s the plan.”
South Africa’s vaccination program has been delayed by about two to three weeks, Karim added, saying how long they expect it to take for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to arrive in the country.
“With every vaccine that we roll out, we can think of it as a two-step process – it’s a step-by-step introduction of each vaccine,” Karim explains.
However, the country is also struggling with the current million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine expiring in April.
The vaccine should have a six-month expiration date, a health ministry official said during a briefing Sunday – when the break was announced – but the Oxford / AstraZeneca doses South Africa received from the Serum Institute of India earlier this month. through with an April due date which we only identified upon arrival. “
Dr. Health Department Anban Pillay said the department is awaiting a response after asking the Serum Institute “for an extension of the date, if possible, or an exchange of the shares.”
During the Sunday briefing, South African Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize said that the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines will be available to health professionals over the next four weeks and that they would look into the expiration of Oxford / AstraZeneca. date issue, saying that there should be “no waste”.