The health minister said South Africa would offer the unapproved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to frontline health workers.
South Africa has canceled plans to use the COVID-19 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and will instead inoculate its front-line health workers with Johnson & Johnson’s unapproved cage, the country’s health minister said on Wednesday.
Zweli Mkhize said vaccinations will begin next week as a study to see what protection COVID-19 offers, especially against the dominant variant in South Africa.
J&J vaccines will be used to launch the first phase of the vaccination action in which 1.25 million health workers in the country will be inoculated, he said.
He said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had been abandoned because it “does not prevent mild to moderate disease” of the variant that has spread widely in South Africa.
The unique J&J vaccine is still being tested internationally and has not been approved in any country.
But Mkhize, in a nationwide address, said the vaccine was safe, based on tests of 44,000 people in South Africa, the United States and Latin America.
Mkhize said Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is safe [File: Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters]
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has proven effective against the 501Y.V2 variant (dominant in South Africa) and the approval processes required for use in South Africa are underway,” said Mkhize.
“The launch of vaccination will continue in the form of an implementation study in partnership with the Medical Research Council and the National Department of Health vaccination sites across the country.
This will provide valuable information about the pandemic in the post-vaccination community and thus ensure the early identification of revolutionary infections if they occur among vaccinated health workers.
These vaccines will be followed by a vaccination campaign for about 40 million people in South Africa by the end of the year.
South Africa will use the Pfizer vaccine and others, including Russian Sputnik V and Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, Mkhize said.