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JOHANNESBURG (AP) – South Africa will give the unapproved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to its frontline health workers starting next week as part of a study to see what protection it offers against COVID-19 , especially against the dominant variant there, the health minister said. Wednesday.
Zweli Mkhize said South Africa has abandoned plans to use the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine because it “does not prevent mild to moderate illness” of the variant.
The J&J one-shot vaccine is still being tested internationally and has not been approved in any country.
But Mkhize, in a nationally released speech, said the vaccine is safe, drawing on tests of 44,000 people in South Africa, the United States and Latin America.
The J&J vaccine will be used to kick off the first phase of South Africa’s campaign in which 1.25 million health workers nationwide will be vaccinated, he said, adding that the agents 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 ongoing,” he said. The J&J vaccine has been clinically tested in South Africa and is in production here under contract with J&J.
These vaccines will be followed by a campaign to immunize around 40 million people in South Africa by the end of the year. The country will also use the Pfizer vaccine and others, possibly including 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. AstraZeneca’s first injections were for frontline health workers.
The locally dominant variant is more contagious and has led to a resurgence of COVID-19 that caused almost twice the cases, hospitalizations and deaths suffered in the initial outbreak of the disease in South Africa.
South Africa and many other African and poor countries have turned to the AstraZeneca vaccine because it is cheaper and does not require storage in ultra-cold freezers. It is also produced in large quantities in India for shipment elsewhere.
An additional complication for South Africa is that its AstraZeneca doses arrived with an expiration date of April 30. South Africa is looking to trade them, Mkhize said.
South Africa has by far the highest number of COVID-19 cases on the African continent with nearly 1.5 million confirmed cases, including nearly 47,000 deaths. This represents 41% of the total for the 54 African countries.
After a resurgence that skyrocketed in early January, cases and deaths are now on the decline, but medical experts are already warning South Africa should prepare for another upsurge in May or June, the start of winter in the southern hemisphere.
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