Tag: COVID vaccine

Categories : COVIDTags :

Activists to Pressure SA Government over COVID Vaccine

On By ModernMedia

With the recent news that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines both have over a 90% efficacy, and air cargo carriers are standing ready to transport them, concerns are mounting that South Africa, with no deals to access vaccines, will be left out in the scramble by richer countries to secure vaccines.

Mark Heywood, executive director of Section27 and a veteran activist, said: “Now that vaccines are becoming available, our government must use all its powers to ensure that people in South Africa have equal access. Neither price nor patents should be an obstacle, and government must start now to think about the systems that will be needed to ensure the smooth distribution of the vaccine, starting for those with the highest risk of Covid-19.”

Dr Anthonet Koen, principal investigator at a COVID vaccine trial site, said: “It’s important that we get a vaccine that’s right, especially for South Africa. We often get overseen and get left behind when it comes to life-saving treatments. If you think about HIV, we were last in line to get access to antiretrovirals, and we don’t want that to happen.”
Koen dispelled any possibility of a vaccine being available before the year is out. “We need to be realistic about this… but hopefully within the first quarter of 2021 we will have something.”

Health Minister Zweli Mkhizi reiterated that there was no vaccine for now, “so we need to adhere to containment measures”.

Not only the vaccine’s acquisition but its logistics for distribution must be taken into account. Economist Mike Schussler said, “The entire supply chain will have to be considered. What we know is that if we had to do half of the South African population it would cost about R40  billion, and that’s highly problematic and unaffordable so we have to think strategically about this.”

Source: IOL

Categories : COVIDTags :

Moderna COVID Vaccine Confers 94.5% Protection

On By ModernMedia

The BBC reports that, hot on the heels of Pfizer/BioNTech’s announcement of 90% protection conferred by their vaccine, Moderna has announced that their trial with 30 000 participants has achieved a 94.5% level of protection.

This is based on the first 95 participants to develop COVID, with only five having received the vaccine while the others received the placebo. Additionally, although 11 participants developed severe COVID, none came from the vaccine group.

Slight, short-lived adverse effects including headaches, fatigue and pain were reported after receiving the vaccine by patients. Prof Peter Openshaw, of Imperial College London commented, “These effects are what we would expect with a vaccine that is working and inducing a good immune response.”

Moderna’s vaccine also has an advantage over the Pfizer vaccine in that it can be stored at -20C for up to six months, and in a refrigerator for one month. This will significantly improve the logistics of its distribution, requiring a less intensive cold storage chain.