J&J halt leaves South Africa without a Covid vaccine
South Africa’s decision to suspend the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after preliminary reports of rare blood clots has left the country without any shots as it struggles to combat an aggressive coronavirus variant.
South Africa has more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, including at least 53,000 deaths, representing more than 30 per cent of all the confirmed cases in Africa’s 54 countries. So far, it has inoculated 290,00 healthcare workers, all with the J&J vaccine.
Its plans to begin large-scale vaccinations next month are dependent upon deliveries of millions of doses of the J&J and Pfizer-BioNTech jabs. The Government said it expects to vaccinate 40 million of the nation’s 60 million by next February.
The health minister said South Africa has not had any reports of blood clots in vaccine recipients, the issue that led the US Food and Drug Administration this week to recommend a pause in the use of the J&J vaccine. Some health experts criticised South Africa’s move to follow the US at such a critical juncture.
“Johnson & Johnson is our only [vaccine] option currently. I really did not expect that we would need to pause,” said Mosa Moshabela, professor of public health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
He said it’s likely health officials could resume use of the J&J vaccines soon, although the disruption could contribute to vaccine hesitancy.
The National Health and Allied Workers, however, welcomed the pause to ensure J&J’s product is safe, union spokesman Khaya Xaba said.
This is not the first abrupt change South Africa has made in its vaccination strategy. In February, it scrapped plans to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to its healthcare workers because a small, preliminary test showed it gave minimal protection against mild to moderate cases caused by the local variant.
It was then that the nation quickly pivoted to the use of the J&J vaccine. It had already taken part in an international clinical trial of the jab without problems. The vaccine also has been found to have good efficacy against the variant dominant locally.
South Africa has ordered 30 million doses of the J&J vaccine and 30 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The J&J jab is being given to its 1.2 million healthcare workers as a large-scale research study, because the shot has not yet been approved for general use in South Africa.
Rashika Alberlito, an intensive care unit administrator at a private hospital in Kwazulu-Natal province, was injected last month with the J&J vaccine. She is now extremely worried: She was hospitalised for nearly two weeks in 2015 because of a blood clot in a lung.
“I was assured it was safe,” she said. “I hope the test results would confirm no causal link between the blood clots and the vaccine.”
Moshabela said it was urgent South Africa vaccinates millions of people as soon as possible. He hopes the suspension will not last long.
“In the meantime, you’re going to have a lot of people who catch Covid, and some of them will die while you delay the [ vaccine] rollout.”
Potential problems with the J&J vaccine could affect all of Africa, as the African Union recently secured orders for 220 million doses to be used across the continent.
“The last thing that we want to have is any cloud of doubt around any vaccines in Africa and the world.
“It just strengthens that belief that vaccines are not safe on the continent of Africa, or in the world for that matter,” said Dr John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. —