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In a briefing on Sunday, South Africa’s Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said the suspension would be temporary while scientists determine how to most effectively deploy the AstraZeneca vaccine. Mkhize said South Africa will move forward with the rollout of vaccines made by Pfizer / BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson.
The first data released on Sunday suggests that two doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine offered only “minimal protection” against mild and moderate Covid-19 of the variant first identified in South Africa.
The study, which has not been published, included around 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31; about half got the vaccine and the other half got a placebo, which doesn’t matter.
Details of the study conducted by researchers at the South African University of the Witwatersrand and others, as well as the University of Oxford, were shared in a press release. The results have been peer reviewed and a preprint will be released soon, Oxford said.
CNN has reached out to AstraZeneca for comment.
A spokesperson for the company said in a statement on Saturday that it is working with the University of Oxford to adapt the vaccine against the B.1.351 variant and will advance it in clinical development so “that it be ready for fall delivery if necessary “.
On Sunday, Maria Van Kerkhove, World Health Organization technical officer for Covid-19, said the WHO’s independent vaccine panel will meet on Monday to discuss the AstraZeneca vaccine and what the new study means for vaccines in the future.
Van Kerkhove told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “some preliminary studies suggest reduced efficacy. But again, these studies are not yet fully published.”
She added that it is essential to have more than one safe and effective vaccine: “We cannot rely on just one product.”
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