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JOHANNESBURG, Feb 8 (Reuters) - South Africa hopes to get
some doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine
around the end of this week, a senior health official said on
Monday, after halting use of the AstraZeneca vaccine due
to disappointing trial data.
Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) vaccine was a good fit at this
stage, health ministry Deputy Director-General Anban Pillay told
state broadcaster SABC, but did not say how many doses the
country would soon receive.
Previously, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the
country had secured 9 million J&J doses that were due to start
arriving in the second quarter.
The J&J vaccine is not yet authorised for use in South
Africa, although the U.S. company has initiated a "rolling
submission" with local regulator SAHPRA.
Pillay said the J&J vaccine had shown in trials to be highly
effective in preventing hospitalisation and death, and said it
was an advantage that it was a one-shot vaccine that could be
stored at fridge temperatures.
"So we think it will be a good vaccine at this point in time
for South Africa," he said.
On Sunday, the government said it was temporarily halting a
large-scale rollout of AstraZeneca's vaccine to healthcare
workers after preliminary data from a clinical trial found it
gave "minimal protection" against mild-to-moderate infection
caused by the dominant 501Y.V2 coronavirus variant in South
Africa.
The trial did not assess the vaccine's efficacy against
severe infection, and its findings have not yet been
peer-reviewed.
AstraZeneca, which developed the vaccine with Oxford
University, says it believes its vaccine can protect against
severe disease and has already started adapting it against the
501Y.V2 variant.
Asked whether the sample size of the AstraZeneca trial was
large enough to draw conclusions from, Pillay said: "I don't
think we can be confident to say the vaccine doesn't work, but
we also don't have the data to say it certainly will work. What
we have are potential indicators."
He said the government needed a "broader discussion" with
local and global scientists to interpret the trial data and say
what the best way forward would be.
South Africa - which has reported the highest number of
confirmed coronavirus infections in Africa and over 46,000
coronavirus-related deaths - hopes to vaccinate 40 million
people, or two-thirds of the population, to achieve some level
of herd immunity.
(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Olivia
Kumwenda-Mtambo and Susan Fenton)
