The government’s top Covid-19 vaccine advisers met on Thursday to discuss launching a clinical trial of AstraZeneca’s shot, designed to answer key questions about the extent to which the jab protects people from severe disease caused by the new variant dominating transmission in SA.
“The advice under serious discussion is the idea of rolling out a study to 100,000 [volunteers] so we can look at the impact on hospitalisation,” said Helen Rees, executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute and a member of health minister Zweli Mkhize’s advisory committee on Covid-19 vaccines.
SA paused its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week after preliminary data from a small clinical trial showed it offered minimal protection against a new variant that emerged in SA late in 2020 and now accounts for more than 90% of cases. That trial included about 2,000 people, but because they were relatively young and at low risk of severe disease, it did not provide any direct evidence on the vaccine’s effect on hospitalisation and death from Covid-19.
Rees said the proposed AstraZeneca trial is likely to include people with above-average risk of severe illness who are only likely to be offered a jab in the national immunisation programme in late 2021 or early 2022. All trial participants will receive the vaccine.
Many scientists are hopeful the AstraZeneca shot will protect people from severe illness and death because it uses the same adenovirus vector technology as the vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Novavax. Preliminary phase 3 trial data for both the J&J and Novavax shots showed no hospitalisations or deaths from Covid-19 among vaccine recipients.
SA has been hit harder than any other African country by Covid-19, and has recorded more than 1.49-million cases and more than 48,500 deaths since March 2020. It aims to immunise two-thirds of the population, or 40-million people, in three phases, starting with 1.25-million health-care workers.
Phase 2 includes people over the age of 60, those with underlying health conditions such as diabetes that place them at higher risk of severe illness, essential workers and people living in congregate settings such as prisons and care homes. The last phase targets the remaining adult population.
The government has indicated that it intends to sell the first 1-million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines it procured from the Serum Institute of India to the AU, as these are already in SA and expire on April 30.
World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said on Thursday in a virtual media conference that “about a dozen” African countries had expressed interest in the AstraZeneca shots on offer from SA. Earlier this week, health deputy director-general Anban Pillay said they would be shared with the AU at no cost to the fiscus, and Mkhize told parliament no “wasteful and fruitless” expenditure would be incurred by the acquisition of these vaccines.
The WHO granted emergency-use approval for AstraZeneca’s shot on Monday, clearing the way for it to be distributed by the international vaccine procurement facility Covax. This approval is vital for many developing countries, which do not have their own medicine regulators.
The WHO has advised countries to administer the vaccines even in regions where new variants are circulating. The strain detected in SA, known as 501Y.V2, has been identified in several African countries, including Botswana, which began administering AstraZeneca’s shot earlier this week.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.