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(Adds WHO officials)
By John Revill
GENEVA, Feb 8 (Reuters) - South Africa will roll out
AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine in a "stepped manner"
to assess its ability to prevent severe illness, Professor
Salim Abdool Karim, co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial
Advisory Committee on COVID-19, said on Monday.
South Africa said on Sunday it would put on hold its use of
the AstraZeneca shot after research showing it was only
minimally effective in preventing mild-to-moderate illness
against a variant of the coronavirus now dominant in the
country.
Speaking to a briefing of the World Health Organization
(WHO), Abdool Karim said it was too early to say whether the
AstraZeneca vaccine would still be effective in preventing
serious disease, as there was not yet enough data on its
effectiveness in older people against the variant.
South Africa would pause its rollout of the AstraZeneca
vaccine for now while determining the next steps, and could
vaccinate 100,000 people with the shot to see how well it worked
on preventing hospitalisations and deaths.
"We don't want to vaccinate people with a product which may
not prevent hospitalisation or reduce disease," Abdool Karim
said.
He said South Africa would initially roll out Johnson &
Johnson's vaccine instead, so the change in plans would
not have a major impact on the pace of South Africa's
vaccination programme.
The AstraZeneca vaccine accounts for nearly all doses - more
than 330 million - that the WHO's COVAX programme intends to
distribute to poor countries in a first phase, beginning as soon
as this month.
Seth Berkeley, chief executive of the GAVI alliance which
co-leads the COVAX programme, said the issue was still being
studied, but suggested there were no plans to reject the vaccine
for now.
He noted that the South African study used a dosing schedule
of four weeks between the first and second dose, and that
evidence had since suggested that the AstraZeneca vaccine
becomes more effective with a longer gap between doses.
Kate O'Brien, head of immunisations at the WHO, said
information would continue to come in to refine plans to use
vaccines, and it was "important to steer a steady ship."
(Reporting by John Revill, Stephanie Nebehay, Emma Farge and
Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Bill Berkrot)
