Concern over status of J&J vaccine

THE national Department of Health yesterday came under fire from some members of Parliament's portfolio committee on health for what they termed as misleading information on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is on a clinical trial instead of a full rollout.

The vaccine targeted at healthcare workers and labelled as the Sisonke Protocol has already been administered to 92 029 public and private frontline healthcare workers from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine batches.

However, members of the portfolio committee expressed deep dissatisfaction over the vaccine after Deputy Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla and the department’s director-general, Dr Sandile Buthelezi, reported yesterday on the rollout. Phaahla and Buthelezi faced the brunt of the ire of members of the committee as they lashed out at the department for failing to clarify whether the Johnson & Johnson vaccines were on an official rollout or a clinical trial.

Addressing the health portfolio committee, Phaahla said that the Johnson & Johnson vaccines had not yet been formally registered and approved by the country’s regulatory health body, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra).

He said that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been tested in South Africa in human trials in terms of Phase 3 around November and December last year, and it had shown to be effective against the 501Y.V2 variant with more than a 57% effectiveness in terms of the variant when the variant was becoming dominant late last year.

“It was the only other vaccine that had done human trials in South Africa and shown results not general in terms of the main, original, Covid-19 virus which is all over the world.”

Phaahla said that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was “technically and legally” subjected to an expanded research in terms of human trials because the doses that were being used in the country were the remaining doses from human trials all over the world.