Last month Africa started seeing the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines to the continent. One of the first countries to confirm the vaccines’ arrival to their nation was South Africa. South Africa has been one of the hardest-hit nations by the pandemic in Africa. Due to this, the country ensured it sped up the process of securing vaccines for its citizens. During its mission to acquire vaccines, South Africa settled on buying and using the AstraZeneca vaccine on a large scale.
COVID-19 Variant halts the use of the AstraZeneca Vaccine in South Africa
But weeks after South Africa confirmed the arrival of the AstraZeneca vaccines, the nation shocked the whole African continent when it reported a virus variant in the country. South Africa made news headlines all across Africa. The country joined the United Kingdom as the only other country that had patients with the coronavirus variant.
The COVID-19 variant first emerged in the United Kingdom in September of last year. Medical researchers identified the new variant to be of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Laboratories all across the globe started racing to understand the biology of the new virus variants. The scientists were tasked with finding out why the variants were spreading quickly in South Africa and the UK. Additionally, the governments required the scientists to figure out whether the variants could diminish the vaccines’ power to defeat natural immunity.
Weeks later, the researchers in South Africa presented their findings concerning the Coronavirus variant. The results revealed that the AstraZeneca vaccine was poor at preventing mild to moderate disease caused by the variant. Because of this, South Africa announced it would not use the AstraZeneca vaccine. Since the announcement, the country has embarked on acquiring other vaccines that could treat the new variant. Furthermore, South Africa is in the process of creating its own vaccine that could help its citizens.
WHO and the African CDC advise African Countries
This week, the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised African countries without the coronavirus variant dominant in South Africa to go ahead and use the AstraZeneca vaccine. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization suggested that even other African countries with the variant use the AstraZeneca vaccine for their patients.
Currently, only seven countries out of 53 nations have reported the variant. But out of the seven countries, only South Africa has expressed concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine. The seven countries are Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Comoros, Ghana, and Mozambique. Only South Africa is overwhelmed by the increasing cases of infections with the new variant.
Despite the uncertainty of the AstraZeneca Vaccine’s effectiveness, the World Health Organization has told countries to continue with it even if the variant is circulating widely. The organization said it was more important to seize the opportunity to continue studying the vaccine and its effectiveness rather than not use it. On the other hand, the African CDC asked African countries to speed up plans to introduce all COVID-19 vaccines. They said that as long as a vaccine has received emergency use authorization or approval by regulatory authorities, countries should use it. Furthermore, they added that testing effectiveness against the variants first reported in the UK and South Africa would be done gradually.
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