AstraZeneca in South Africa - to rollout or not to rollout zimbabwestar.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from zimbabwestar.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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against the new variant, 501Y.V2, with a third wave around the corner, is not that devastating for two reasons.
Alarming announcements made on Sunday night have cast a dark shadow over South Africa’s vaccine rollout plan.
The results of a trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, conducted in South Africa, appear to indicate the vaccine’s efficacy may be as low as 10% against the new variant, 501Y.V2, that is prevalent throughout the country.
In response, the government has postponed the planned rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, marking the first time any country’s vaccination programme has been halted over doubts about effectiveness, and dealing a severe blow to South Africa’s already flimsy vaccine rollout plan.
Dan Merino: Hello and welcome to the first episode of a new podcast from The Conversation!
Gemma Ware: Each week we’ll be bringing you expert analysis on the world’s biggest stories
Dan: And groundbreaking new research, explained by the academics behind it.
In this episode, we’re talking to three experts about the three separate Mars missions due to arrive on the red planet in February.
Jim Bell: What we’re looking for is evidence of past life.
Gemma: We’ll also hear from a researcher who has just carried out a rare survey of public opinion in Belarus, more than six months into protests there over a disputed election.
Novavax Covid-19 vaccine trials: Why do the UK and SA results differ?
Trials conducted on the efficacy of the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine show varying results between the UK and South Africa. Professor Shabir Madhi writes that the efficacy in the United Kingdom is 89% ‘at least seven days after individuals had received two doses of the vaccine.’ In South Africa, the efficacy was found to be just 60% ‘in people living without HIV’. So why the big difference? Here, Professor Madhi details why the efficacy rate is so different – and why it matters.
This article was first published on The Conversation.
– Jarryd Neves
The South African variant of Covid-19 has changed the outlook for the way the coronavirus pandemic is likely to unfold – in South Africa as well as elsewhere. Scientists in South Africa say there is a “reasonable concern” that the new variant of Covid-19 sweeping across the country might prove to be more resistant to current vaccines being rolled out in the UK and elsewhere, and warn that it makes the need for a global roll-out of vaccines “even more critical”. In this episode of Inside Covid-19, we speak to one of South Africa’s leading scientists in the fight against Sars-CoV-2. Professor Shabir Madhi, a globally renowned professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, has been leading trials for the vaccine in South Africa. He shares the details of the work going on behind the scenes to understand the mutations and what this means for vaccine development, the impact of the disease on people and how governments can respond to the changing threat from th