South Africa suspends AstraZeneca vaccine drive

South Africa on Sunday suspended plans to inoculate its front-line health care workers with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, after a small clinical trial suggested that it isn't effective in preventing mild to moderate illness from the variant dominant in the country.

The country received its first one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week and was expected to begin giving jabs to health care workers in the middle of this month. But preliminary data from a small study suggested that the AstraZeneca vaccine offers only “minimal protection against mild-moderate disease" caused by the variant in South Africa.

The study, which hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, involved 2,000 people, most of whom were young and healthy. The volunteers’ average age was 31. Salim Abdool Karim, chairman of South Africa's COVID-19 advisory committee, said there wasn't enough data on how well the vaccine protects against severe disease caused by the variant.

"The AstraZeneca vaccine rollout needs to be put on temporary hold while we get the clinical efficacy information," he said. He added that there would only be a wide scale rollout of the jab if new data on could show "acceptable" hospitalization rates. Other vaccines have shown reduced efficacy against the variant, but have provided good protection from serious disease and death. 

(Image Credits: AP)