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South Africa’s decision to suspend the mass deployment of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after a study found it to offer reduced protection against the South African variant is “just a temporary delay” and includes a new deployment strategy, the head of the South African Covid -19 advisory committee said on Monday.
“It is only a temporary delay, but the way we are going to deploy it will be different in that we take a two-step approach,” epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim told Times Radio.
Speaking at a Sunday briefing, Karim said that “if the vaccine proves ineffective in reducing hospitalizations, we will have to offer these people another effective vaccine – either a booster of that vaccine … or give them another vaccine.” We can therefore continue our deployment, but we must do so … wisely by adopting a step-by-step approach. “
He pointed out that the reason for this approach is that “we don’t really know the answer on serious illness”.
The first data released on Sunday suggests 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 the variant, called B.1.351, was “significantly reduced” compared to the earlier strain of coronavirus, 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 further explained on Monday that South Africa will only carry out a massive rollout of the vaccine once they are “convinced” that it will reduce hospitalization of 100,000 people infected with the variant first identified. times in the country.
The first step is to vaccinate probably around 100,000 people and then assess hospitalization rates. And once we are convinced that hospitalization rates are low with the AstraZeneca vaccine, we proceed to roll out the millions of remaining doses we have, ”said Karim.
“If it turns out that hospitalization rates are not as low as we would like, then of course we would stop and no longer deploy AstraZeneca – so that’s the plan.”
South Africa’s vaccination schedule has been delayed by about two to three weeks, Karim added, saying this is how long they predict it will take for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to arrive in the country. country.
“With each vaccine that we’re going to deploy, we can think of it as a two-step process – it’s a step-by-step introduction of each vaccine,” explained Karim.
However, the country is also grappling with the current million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine expiring in April.
The vaccine is expected to have a six-month expiration date, a health ministry official said in a briefing on Sunday – when the hiatus was announced – but doses from Oxford / AstraZeneca than South Africa received earlier this month from the Serum Institute of India “arrived with an April expiration date that we only identified upon arrival.”
Dr Anban Pillay of the Department of Health said the Department is awaiting a response after asking the Serum Institute for “an extension of the date, if possible, or an exchange of stocks.”
During Sunday’s briefing, South African Minister of Health Dr Zweli Mkhize said that for the next four weeks, the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines will be available to health workers and that ‘they would review the Oxford / AstraZeneca expiration. question of date, saying that there should be “no waste”.
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