Health experts have slammed the government for selling vaccines that would have protected scores of people against a Covid-19 variant that is now dominant in SA.
The AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that SA sold to other African states in February offers a 94% efficacy against the new Delta variant that was first detected in India and has wreaked havoc over the past couple of months.
The highly transmissible variant has been discovered in the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Sunday evening.
Vaccinology experts have blamed the government for rushing to sell the 1.5m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine despite warnings not to do so. Experts said the government was not armed with enough evidence on AstraZeneca's lack of efficacy against the disease and hospitalisation.
Professor of vaccinology at Wits University Shabir Madhi, who is also the AstraZeneca study's principal investigator, said SA should have never gone against the advice of the World Health Organisation's (WHO's) advisory group of world experts on immunisation, who recommended that the vaccine should be used in countries with the Beta variant that was dominant in SA at the time.
“Despite the recommendation from WHO's scientific advisory group of experts, the SA government and probably the Ministerial Advisory Committee, decided not to follow the WHO recommendation,” Madhi said.
on Monday, Madhi reiterated sentiments echoed in February when he emphasised that the AstraZeneca vaccine may still provide protection, saying it may trigger a powerful T cell response, which can target and eliminate cells the variant manages to infect.
“We believe that those T cell responses will still remain intact despite the mutations that exist in a B.1.351 (Beta) variant,” Madhi said in February.
He said the vaccine could have been given mainly to high-risk individuals as it could have protected them against severe disease.
SA had relied on the results of trials on about 2,000 individuals, which found AstraZeneca offered a low efficacy against mild and moderate disease when tested against the Beta variant that had been dominant in the country.
“That was a decision that government decided to make... so unfortunately what happened is that whoever made the decision or provided that advice to government simply didn't understand how to interpret the results from the study in SA,” Madhi said.
“They also decided that people in SA who were part of the Ministerial Advisory Committee have much more wisdom than the international scientific advisory group of experts that make recommendations on behalf of the WHO for the world.”
Dr Benjamin Kagina from the University of Cape Town said: “My views were, this evidence alone was not sufficient to make the decision as the study was not designed to address the efficacy of the vaccine against the Beta variant. It would have been useful to consider additional data before making that decision.”
Acting health minister Mamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said: “A decision taken by government not to use AstraZeneca vaccines was a result of advice from experts.”
Kubayi-Ngubane said this resulted from evidence showing the vaccine was not effective against the dominant Beta variant at the time.
“This decision was in line with SA's evidence-based approach to Covid-19. Suggestions that it was wrong to not use AstraZeneca are irresponsible and not in the best interest of this country and its people,” Kubayi-Ngubane said.
Dr Clare Cutland, a scientific co-ordinator at Wits African Leadership in Vaccinology, said: “We didn't have data that showed that there was no efficacy against severe disease and we had the perfect situation to roll out the vaccine..
“It's a well-known fact that viruses mutate, and as transmissions increase so are the chances of the virus to mutate,” Cutland said.
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