Almost half-a-million healthcare workers who received a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Covid-19 vaccine under the Sisonke study this year are to be offered a booster shot from November8, acting health director-general Nicholas Crisp confirmed on Thursday.
Pressure has been mounting on the government to provide booster shots to high-risk groups such as healthcare workers ahead of a possible fourth wave of infections in December, as a steadily growing number of countries are now recommending their use. The US, for example, has approved Pfizer, Moderna and J&J shots as boosters. It also says adults who received a J&J jab more than two months ago can receive boosters, and allows eligible people to mix and match their shots.
Healthcare workers were the first group to be offered Covid-19 vaccines in SA, in recognition of their increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV2. Many received their J&J shot more than eight months ago.
The Sisonke study was devised to ensure healthcare workers could get inoculated before J&J’s shot was licensed in SA, after the government’s last-minute decision in February to halt the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. This was after research showing the AstraZeneca shot offered little protection against mild to moderate illness caused by the Beta coronavirus strain that was dominating transmission in SA at the time. The study ran from February 17 to May 16.
The government began administering shots to the broader population on May 17, and is providing the single-shot J&J vaccine and the double-jab Pfizer/BioNTech regimen.
Crisp said only healthcare workers who had received a J&J shot under the Sisonke study will be eligible for a booster. The new phase 3b study has been approved by the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) and the relevant research ethics committees.
Healthcare workers’ calls for a Pfizer booster shot could not be accommodated at this stage because Sahpra had not cleared it to be used in a mix-and-match fashion, he said.
Ian Sanne, one of the lead investigators of the Sisonke study, said eligible healthcare workers would be able to obtain their J&J booster shot at more than 250 designated sites in the public and private sector. The vaccines to be used in the study had been donated by J&J.
“We are busy working on the data systems, vaccination distribution, and are about to release a site locator to enable healthcare workers to identify the site closest to them,” he said.
‘Fourth wave’
“We want to be ahead of the curve for the fourth wave.”
SA Medical Association chair Angelique Coetzee said that heterologous boosters — when the booster is a different type of vaccine than the first shot — were more effective than extra shots of the same jab. She called on Pfizer to seek regulatory clearance for its vaccine to be used in this way.
Crisp said ramping up vaccine coverage among older people remains a public health priority, as people over the age of 50 are at much higher risk of severe illness, hospitalisation and death from Covid-19. The government aims to provide at least one dose to 70% of adults by the end of the year, and to reach 85% of adults over the age of 50 by this stage.
By October 27, SA had administered 21.9-million vaccine doses and reached 14.99-million adults, equivalent to 37% of the adult population. By this stage, 62.5% of people over the age of 60, and 55.6% of people aged between 50 and 59, had received at least one dose.
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