SOUTH Africa expects to receive its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines from the global vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organization in the second quarter of next year, the health ministry said.
The ministry added in a statement that it was on track to sign an agreement with the COVAX program by December 15, by which date it would also make the first tranche of payment.
South Africa has recorded more than 800,000 coronavirus infections and over 21,000 deaths related to COVID-19, the most on the African continent.
The country is seeking to buy vaccines for 10% of its population of roughly 58 million people via COVAX. The full cost of purchasing that amount of doses is roughly 2.2 billion rands ($145.1 million), of which 327 million rands is a down payment, the health ministry said.
“Our understanding from the production estimates we have been provided with at this stage is that we should expect to receive the first batch of stock in quarter two of 2021,” the ministry’s statement said.
The ministry added that no vaccine manufacturers had yet submitted applications to local health regulator SAHPRA to roll out their vaccine candidates.
“Nevertheless SAHPRA has committed to ensuring the expeditious evaluation of these vaccines once the dossiers have been received,” it said.
Source – Thomson Reuters Foundation.
ESWATINI Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini, who tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago, has been transferred to a hospital in neighbouring South Africa for further treatment, the tiny absolute monarchy’s government has announced.
The country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Themba Masuku, said in a statement Dlamini was moved to “guide and fast track his recovery”.
The southern African nation of around 1.2 million people has so far recorded 6,419 positive cases of the highly infectious respiratory disease, with 122 confirmed deaths, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Source – Thomson Reuters Foundation.
VACCINE maker Novavax Inc has pushed back the start of a U.S.-based, late-stage trial for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and now expects it to begin in the coming weeks instead of November, the company has announced.
It is the second time that Novavax, which already has a late-stage UK trial underway, has rescheduled the Phase 3 trial after first flagging an October start, hampered by issues in scaling up its manufacturing.
Shares of the U.S.-based company, which lags behind larger rivals Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc in their COVID-19 vaccine development timelines, fell 6% on the latest delay.
Novavax plans to use vaccine material produced at commercial scale for the trial in the United States and Mexico and has been working closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to greenlight the use of the vaccine made at a North Carolina plant.
The company also said it has completed enrollment for its 15,000 participant UK trial and expects interim data as soon as the first quarter of 2021.
It has previously said that the UK trial could be the basis for some global regulatory approvals.
More than 25% of enrollees in the UK trial are over the age of 65, while a large proportion of volunteers had underlying co-morbid medical conditions generally representative of the population.
Novavax is also running a fully enrolled Phase 2b trial in South Africa, which has 4,400 volunteers including 245 who are medically stable, HIV positive participants. Efficacy data from that trial could also be available in the first quarter of next year.
Source – Thomson Reuters Foundation.