Minister of Health, Dr. Zweli Mkhize announces that there will be a replacement of the ineffective Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
The 1 million vaccines that landed in SA last week has been put on temporary hold due to the complaint and study carried out on it, which proves it provides minimal protection against mild and moderate cases of the 501y.v2 variant.
The minister of health says the plan to vaccinate people next-week will not fail, but this time around it will be with Johnson and Johnson vaccines.
“Next week the people will start getting vaccines. We have not given dates because we want to align it with our plans. We will be starting the vaccinations next week. We will be getting some Johnson and Johnson doses in time to start next week to vaccinate,” said Mkhize during an interview on SAfm.
Mkhize said “The most important thing was to find an alternative to ensure our plan doesn’t derail. We have been able to achieve that partly, we have reached out to other companies, so that we can bring forward the Johnson and Johnson vaccine which we have ordered from them and we are also going to bring forward the Pfizer vaccine. The issue for us is that the vaccination programme continues.”
