well south africa has suspended its
rollout of the oxford astrazeneca
coronavirus vaccine after a small
clinical trial suggested that it offered
only minimal protection
against mild to moderate illness from
the covet variant that originated in the
country
south africa received more than a
million doses of the vaccine
and had planned to start inoculating
frontline health care workers in the
coming days
authorities say that the vaccination
program will proceed in the coming weeks
but
with vaccines by by johnson johnson and
pfizer biontech
instead
let's get more we are joined by
professor salim abdul karim he is south
africa's leading infectious disease
specialist and one of the chief medical
advisors to the south african government
thank you so much for your time this
afternoon sir why
suspend the astrazeneca vaccine rollout
isn't limited protection better than
zero protection
good afternoon so when we uh developed
our overall vaccine strategy we always
wanted to have a diversity
of candidates and so ashley seneca was
one of the candidates we selected based
on
the evidence that was available that
showed it was effective against
both mild and severe disease including
hospitalization
however the study that was just
published
that was just released yesterday
showed that the efficacy against mild
disease
is quite low and that's supported by
laboratory evidence as well
now we are uncertain about whether the
astaxenical vaccine
also prevents severe disease and
hospitalization
against the 501y v2 variant that is
prevalent in south africa and so
in that kind of uncertainty we thought
it prudent
to put a delay on the roll out of the
astrazeneca vaccine until we
can establish the processes to collect
the information to assess this
okay and there has been some reaction we
have to say to that decision
professor sarah gilbert for example
oxford's lead vaccine developer she said
that the vaccine should still protect
against severe disease that she is at
least optimistic that that is still the
case
um in the meantime we've mentioned your
your frontline workers
uh your healthcare workers they were
first in line to get this vaccine and
that was supposed to happen in the in
the coming days
so what do you tell them now that it's
on hold given that they are
facing that risk on a daily basis
of course i wouldn't expect the
investigators to say anything
negative about their product but the
reality is
that speculation doesn't help us we need
evidence and the way in which we propose
to collect that evidence is to actually
roll out the astrazeneca vaccine in a
stepwise manner
where the first group that gets the
vaccine we would assess
hospitalization rates and if we find
it's below the threshold
and we will continue the roll out of the
astrazeneca vaccine
if we find it's above that ratio we'll
stop the astrazeneca vaccine because
we would like the approach that we take
to be based on evidence we would
wouldn't want to see us rolling this out
to healthcare workers only to find out
later it doesn't prevent
hospitalization and severe disease as
for the
healthcare workers we have managed to
secure
some doses of the johnson and johnson
vaccine
and those will start to be rolled out
within the next
week or two so it's we haven't really
impacted that much
on our initial starting date what we
have impacted
is our scale up we now have to take a
more prudent approach to scale up
while we're scaling up the johnson and
johnson vaccine
we will in parallel also be doing so
with the astrazeneca to assess its
efficacy against hospitalization
just briefly tell us what makes you
think that the other vaccines will have
better results
so as it stands right now the johnson
and johnson vaccine
has actually been studied in south
africa in a very large trial
that included the elderly as well and so
they already have evidence to show that
against the variant
in south africa known as 501y v2
the johnson johnson vaccine is
efficacious against that
and it's 85 percent efficacious against
hospitalization and severe disease
so on that basis we feel quite confident
to move forward
with the johnson and johnson we do
however want to ensure we have a
diversity of products
and so we do need to assess it's
effective the efficacy of
each new vaccine whether it's astaxineca
or pfizer
all of those will have to be assessed as
part of the rollout
and while you are assessing that
efficacy i just like to ask you because
i mean
you know um your hold of the rollout of
the astrazeneca
has a lot of people nervous because it
could potentially you know have
wide-ranging consequences for other
initiatives
do you suggest that other countries
should follow south africa's example
because for example the va this
particular vaccine is a major component
of the initial
kovacs global vaccine rollout which
covers
you know about 150 countries around the
world mostly with
lower and and lower middle income
economies
yeah i think each country will have to
make its own decision
right now south africa is in a slightly
different position
because the 501 v2 variant which
is the variant that is able to escape
immunity
constitutes about 80 to 90 percent of
our circulating virus so our situation
is different
our decisions should not really apply to
other
centers in other countries unless they
also have a dominance of the same
variant
so our decision is variant related it's
not related to the specifics of the
vaccine
there are other challenges for the
astrazeneca vaccine
the availability of safety data in the
elderly and so on so those are issues
that need to be resolved by regulators
from our point of view
we need to know the vaccine is
efficacious in preventing people from
getting
severe illness and that's what we're
waiting for we thank you so much for
joining us to walk us through
the decision-making process and the
plans going forward south africa's
leading
infectious disease specialist salim
abdul karim we appreciate it thank you
pleasure let's take a look at some other
developments in the coronavirus pandemic
world's health organization experts are
meeting in geneva to discuss the
astrazeneca vaccine following its
suspension in south africa
the shot is a major part of global
vaccine rollout plans as we've just
heard
authorities in south korea's capital
seoul have launched a testing program
for pet cats and dogs after the country
reported its first covet 19 case in a
kitten
tests will be limited to pets showing
symptoms of the virus who have been
exposed to someone who tested positive
and the u.s has passed 27 million cases
of the coronavirus the highest number in
the world
this says president joe biden warns it
will be difficult to vaccinate 75
percent of the population and achieve
herd immunity
by the end of the summer
you