AstraZeneca vaccine plays a key role, the South African trial director says

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The chief investigator of the South African trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine said he believed it had a big role to play in Africa and around the world, despite data showed that the vaccine offered little protection against induced moderate-to-severe COVID-19 infection. with the main variation of the country’s virus.

Shabir Madhi of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg told Reuters that he would immediately start dispensing the country’s existing 1 million AstraZeneca doses, since they left in April and that it would be un- carefully the litter.

“It makes no sense for us to have 1 million doses of vaccine that is known to be safe and not to start being distributed at least for high-risk groups,” Madhi said in an interview .

South African health officials said Sunday that they had been suspending AstraZeneca vaccines for some time while seeking scientific advice on how to proceed. Vaccinations were expected to begin soon, after the first doses of vaccine arrived on a plane from India last week.

The country, which has recorded the largest coronavirus infections on the African continent and more than 46,000 deaths, aims to vaccinate 40 million people, or two-thirds of their population, to boost herd immunity. reach.

Madhi said the AstraZeneca bullet was likely to protect against COVID-19 infection, since it was developed using technology similar to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has been proven to be effective in ‘bad COVID-19 prevention.

South Africa needed to rebalance its expectations of vaccines this week after the lawsuit showed less efficacy against moderate to severe illness caused by the 501Y difference. V2 more contagious, as well as deciding which groups to focus on and starting to dispense doses again a week, he said.

“To start turning your back on a life-saving vaccine, I didn’t understand the reasoning behind it,” Madhi said.

He said he would use the AstraZeneca vaccine to start protecting South Africa’s elderly and those with co-infections.

The first vaccination plan in the country was planned to start with health workers, but Madhi said most of the illnesses that were likely to occur among that group were moderately infectious and so the AstraZeneca injection would have be better used on those at greater risk. of severe illness.