Vaccine plan set to resume
HEALTH Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize has remained tight-lipped on providing a set date when health-care workers will begin receiving their vaccination jabs, but he has stated that the vaccination programme will resume next week.
Mkhize yesterday addressed a variety of concerns raised by the public.
This comes amid government’s U-turns on its plans to begin administering the Astrazeneca vaccine after a study conducted by Wits University showed that this vaccine was less effective in preventing mild to moderate effects of the Covid-19 501Y.V2 variant most dominant in South Africa.
The Department of Health will now push forward the roll-out of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has been shown to be 57% effective against the 501Y.V2 strain.
The minister said that this vaccine would be rolled out in an implementation study to monitor any effects the vaccine might have on already vaccinated health-care workers.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been proven effective against the 501Y.V2 variant and the necessary approval processes used in the country are underway. The roll-out of the vaccination will proceed in the form of an implementation study with the partnership between the Medical Research Council and the national department of health’s vaccination sites across the country. This will help us get valuable information about the pandemic in the post-vaccination community and thus ensure early identification of breakthrough infections should they occur among the vaccinated healthcare workers,” the minister said.
The country is also expected to roll out the Pfizer vaccine.
Both vaccines had to be procured urgently because of concerns regarding the Astrazeneca vaccine. This has also resulted in the government needing to rewrite its vaccination goals. Mkhize had earlier indicated the country aimed to vaccinate 65% of the population by the end of the year with the aim of reaching herd immunity. Those plans have now been put on hold as the Astrazeneca vaccine formed a huge part of the vaccine roll-out schedule.
“The new projections, we are going to be revising them. We are just waiting for the complete schedule of the distribution of the vaccines so we can see when those vaccines are available.”
Scientists are now tasked with figuring out how best the government can use the more than 1 million Astrazeneca vaccine doses which were procured. Mkhize said the government was also in talks with the World Health Organisation’s Covax programme and the AU, which were on schedule to provide the same vaccine to the country.
Mkhize defended concerns about the April 30 expiry date on the Astrazeneca vaccine, saying that if the vaccination schedule had not been interrupted the doses would have been used by that date.
The government is also in negotiations with Us-based pharmaceutical company Moderna, the Russians for their Sputnik V vaccine and China for their Sinopharm vaccine.