JOHANNESBURG (AP) – South Africa will give the unapproved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to its primary care health workers starting next week as a study to see what protection it offers against COVID-19, particularly the variant that is dominant there, said the health minister. Wednesday.
Zweli Mkhize said South Africa has dropped plans to use the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine because it does not “prevent mild to moderate disease” from the variant.
The one-shot J&J vaccine is still undergoing international testing and is not approved in any country.
But Mkhize stated in a nationally broadcast address that the vaccine is safe and relies on tests on 44,000 people in South Africa, the United States and Latin America.
The J&J vaccine will be used to launch the first phase of the South African campaign that will vaccinate the country’s 1.25 million health workers, he said, adding that workers will be closely monitored.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been shown to be effective against the 501Y.V2 variant and the necessary approval processes for use in South Africa are underway,” he said. The J&J vaccine has been in clinical trials in South Africa and is produced here, under contract from J&J.
Those shots will be followed by a campaign to vaccinate an estimated 40 million people in South Africa by the end of the year. The country will also use the Pfizer vaccine and others, possibly including the Russian Sputnik V, Chinese Sinopharm and Moderna vaccines, Mkhize said.
South Africa had purchased 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India, and the first million doses arrived this month. The first AstraZeneca shots were intended for primary care health workers.
The locally dominant variant is more contagious and triggered a resurgence of COVID-19 causing nearly twice as many cases, hospitalizations and deaths as in the initial wave of the disease in South Africa.
South Africa and many other African and poor countries had looked to the AstraZeneca vaccine because it is cheaper and does not need to be stored in ultra-cold freezers. It is also produced in large quantities in India for shipment elsewhere.
An added complication for South Africa is that the AstraZeneca doses arrived with an expiration date of April 30. South Africa wants to trade them, Mkhize said.
South Africa has by far the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the African continent with nearly 1.5 million confirmed cases, including nearly 47,000 deaths. That represents 41% of the total for all 54 countries in Africa.
After a resurgence that peaked in early January, cases and deaths are now declining, but medical experts are already warning South Africa should prepare for another revival in May or June, the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.