Questions over Namibian-bound Covid-19 vaccine
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) country director, Dr Eric Dziuban, said the local team is carefully looking at new developments regarding the Oxford/ AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which Namibia is due to receive later this month.
Dziuban said recent developments, which, among others, questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine, is not shocking.
“We knew issues like these were going to come up. A vaccine roll-out during a pandemic is not all going to be smooth – and this can get complicated – but at the same time, everybody expected changes like this will arise,” said Dziuban.
He said the new developments are something they are all carefully looking at right now.
“It is surprising and concerning to see these results regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine and the South Africa variant. There are still early results – and there is a lot more to learn, and Namibia will need to make decisions even if it is based on limited data about what we will be doing in the weeks ahead.”
AFP yesterday reported that a study, conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, concluded the British vaccine offered only
“limited protection against moderate forms of the disease caused by the South African variant in young adults”.
This led to South Africa, who received the vaccine last week, halting its roll-out, while authorities in that country await advice from scientists on how best to proceed.
Dziuban added his team was in touch with the health ministry-led vaccine task force.
Approached for comment, health minister Dr Kalumbi Shangula responded he was in a meeting and could not comment on what the new developments could mean for Namibia.
Shangula last week announced the country was due to receive its first batch of vaccine doses mid-February to first inoculate frontline workers and the vulnerable.
With confirmed cases reaching 1.5 million, South Africans, like many other countries, were planning on giving the jab to healthcare workers first.
Dziuban said things might be different if a country has multiple vaccines.
“It might have a different meaning for a country that has multiple types of vaccines available, compared to a country that only has one currently available vaccine – and again, these results are early ones that are being shared, and they involve a limited number of people, but we will take them seriously even while we are still waiting for a more full set of results to come up,” he said.
Having multiple vaccines, according to Dziuban, would be ideal.
“The best possible way would be to have multiple effective vaccines available – and if you do have a complication with one, you would hope to have others that are able to be utilised. This is limited to the fact that each vaccine is going for its own approval processes and demand from countries around that world – and each has its own issues; some of them are difficult to distribute because of very strict cold chain requirements.
Others might have difficulty in being effective against certain variants or certain populations. We will always want more options rather than less.”
Last week, Hage Geingob guaranteed his administration will not compromise on the health and safety of Namibians by procuring Covid-19 vaccines that are not effective.