NZ in ‘good position’ despite vaccine woes

CONCERNS that a Covid19 vaccine New Zealand has prepurchased may not be fully protective should be taken seriously but the country is strongly placed, a Dunedin scientist says.

‘‘We remain in a pretty good position to choose which vaccine we might want to use,’’ University of Otago Webster Centre for Infectious Diseases director Associate Prof James Ussher said yesterday.

South Africa paused a planned rollout of a Covid19 vaccine New Zealand has prepurchased millions of doses of, over concerns it may not be fully protective against the B.1.351 (South African) coronavirus variant.

Prof Ussher said that challenges to vaccine efficacy posed by the South African and some other coronavirus variants were ‘‘definitely a serious’’ issue.

The move came after a new analysis, in South Africa, showed the OxfordAstraZeneca vaccine provided only minimal protection against mildmoderate Covid19 infection from the South African variant.

Under its prepurchase agreement, New Zealand has signed up for about 7.6 million doses of the OxfordAstraZeneca vaccine, enough for 3.8 million people.

Prof Ussher said that by ‘‘hedging’’ its bets by prepurchasing vaccines from several providers, the New Zealand Government had maximised ‘‘our chances of getting early access to an effective vaccine at a stage when no efficacy data was available’’.

New Zealand has prepurchased four vaccines, from Pfizer and BioNTech; Janssen Pharmaceutica; and Novavax, as well as from AstraZeneca.

The first agreement was for 1.5 million vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech, which the New Zealand medical regulator MedSafe granted provisional approval for last week, the New Zealand Herald has reported.

The Janssen and Novavax vaccines were both ‘‘effective at protecting against severe disease and hospitalisation caused by the South African variant’’, but both vaccines appeared to be less effective against less severe disease caused by the variant.

More research was needed to clarify the performance of the Oxford vaccine against severe disease in this context, he said.