South Africa hopes to receive J&J COVID-19 vaccines this week

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa hopes to receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson by the end of this week, a senior health official said on Monday, after stopping use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in due to disappointing test data.

Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) vaccine was doing well at this point, Department of Health deputy managing director Anban Pillay told state broadcaster SABC, but did not say how many doses the country would receive soon. .

Previously, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country had secured 9 million doses of J&J which were due to start arriving in the second quarter.

The J&J vaccine is not yet licensed for use in South Africa, although the US company has launched a “continuous submission” with local regulator SAHPRA.

Pillay said the J&J vaccine has been shown to be very effective in trials in preventing hospitalization and death, and said it was an advantage that it was a single-dose vaccine that could be stored at refrigerator temperature.

“So we think it will be a good vaccine at this stage for South Africa,” he said.

On Sunday, the government said it was temporarily halting the large-scale deployment of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to healthcare workers after preliminary data from a clinical trial revealed it offered “minimal protection” against a disease. mild to moderate infection caused by the dominant coronavirus 501Y.V2 variant in South Africa.

The trial did not assess the vaccine’s effectiveness against severe infection and its results have not yet been peer reviewed.

AstraZeneca, which developed the vaccine with the University of Oxford, believes its vaccine can protect against serious disease and has already started adapting it against the 501Y.V2 variant.

When asked if the sample size of the AstraZeneca trial was large enough to draw any conclusions, Pillay said, “I don’t think we can be sure to say the vaccine doesn’t work, but we don’t have the data to tell either. it will definitely work. What we have are potential indicators. “

He said the government needed a “wider discussion” with local and global scientists to interpret the data from the trials and say what the best way forward would be.

South Africa – which has reported the highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Africa and more than 46,000 coronavirus-related deaths – hopes to vaccinate 40 million people, or two-thirds of the population, to reach a certain level collective immunity.