State-backed vaccine developer Biovac is in discussion with several pharmaceutical companies developing Covid-19 vaccines to potentially manufacture shots in SA, CEO Morena Makhoana said on Thursday.
The public-private partnership was established in 2003 to revive SA’s human vaccine manufacturing capabilities, with the state owning 47.5% and the majority stake held by a private consortium led by Immunotek. Earlier in November it began manufacturing Sanofi Pasteur’s six-in-one paediatric vaccine Hexaxim, the first time since the mid-1990s that sterile human vaccines have been made in SA.
Makhoana said the regulatory approval required for the formulation and filling of Hexaxim vials put Biovac in good stead to manufacture most types of Covid-19 vaccines under development. While Biovac is not licensed to manufacture live, attenuated vaccines, it has the potential to make Covid-19 vaccines that are based on inactivated virus, mRNA, or a protein sub-unit, he said. The two front-runner Covid-19 vaccine candidates, which are being developed by Pfizer and Moderna, use mRNA technology.
Biovac had the capacity to manufacture between 20-million and 30-million Covid-19 vaccines a year, depending on the technology involved, said Makhoana.
He conceded this was a fraction of the 300-million annual doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine that Aspen plans to manufacture at its facility in Port Elizabeth. But it would nevertheless be sufficient to reach as much as half the South African population, he said.
Biovac initially expects to manufacture 4-million doses of Hexaxim a year, destined for the local market. But it may expand production to meet the needs of other African countries. Hexaxim provides protection against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B, haemophilus influenza B and polio, and has been provided by the state as part of its childhood immunisation programme since 2015.
“Globally, South Africa is the leading country in the utilisation of this type of vaccine,” said Sanofi Pasteur commercial operations head Stephen Alix.
Biovac was the first external partner to secure a technology transfer agreement with Sanofi for Hexaxim, which it signed in 2012. The agreement aligned with Biovac’s strategy of backward integration, which has seen the entity gradually increase its capacity to do complex technical work, said Makhoana.
Biovac also has a technology transfer agreement with Pfizer to make its pneumonia vaccine Prevnar-13, and plans are on track for manufacturing to begin next year, he said.
In a separate development, one of health minister Zweli Mkhize’s top advisers on Covid-19 sounded a warning about vaccine fears, saying any hope of reaching herd immunity could be compromised if a significant proportion of the population chose not to take the shots.
“The vaccine hesitancy issue really poses a major risk to achieving herd immunity,” said University of KwaZulu-Natal epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim, who co-chairs the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19.
He pointed to a recent global survey published in Nature Medicine which found 71.5% of 13,246 people in 19 countries reported they would be very or somewhat likely to accept a Covid-19 vaccine, saying it was important to depoliticise vaccines and provide people with accurate information.
The survey found acceptance rates ranged from almost 90% in China to less than 55% in Russia. Vaccine acceptance was relatively high in SA, at almost 82%, according to the study.
kahnt@businesslive.co.za
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