The first healthcare workers in South Africa have been immunised with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine. This is after the country received 500 000 vials of the jab for free from the pharmaceutical company.
The J&J vaccine was tested in South Africa and was found to be 57 per cent effective in preventing mild to severe Covid-19 caused by the variant of the virus dominant in South Africa.
This was announced by J&J in late January. South Africa was one of eight countries globally to test the one-dose J&J vaccine as part of the world’s largest Covid-19 vaccine trial to date.
Not a single person who received the vaccine in these eight countries was hospitalised with Covid-19 or died, regardless of what variants were circulating at the time.
“Severe hospitalisation, severe disease, death… really, the vaccine has essentially prevented all of that overall,” told Desmond Tutu (Health Foundation COO) and study co-chair Linda-Gail Bekker to the health advocacy organisation African Alliance.
The African Alliance has put together five things you need to know about the vaccine roll out in South Africa.
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Scientists know that the J&J vaccine is safe and effective against the variant of Covid-19 found in the country. J&J has applied to the national regulator, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), but it will take time for SAHPRA to review this.
In the meantime, South Africa has secured 500 00 free vials of the J&J vaccine and each vial holds enough to vaccinate several different people.
These vials are left over from J&J’s clinical trials. SAHPRA has approved the use of these vaccines while it continues to work through the application it has received from J&J that allows the company to sell stocks of its vaccine in the country.
You may hear this special arrangement is called an “implementation study,” but researchers already know that the vaccine is safe and effective.
Without these free doses, South Africa would have had to wait until March or April to get stocks of the J&J vaccine. There is no reason to think that the J&J vaccine isn’t safe or that it doesn’t work.
How do healthcare workers sign up to get a vaccine?
There is only one way to register, visit the government’s online portal for more information. Healthcare workers who cannot access the portal should contact their occupational health officer at work.
Where will healthcare workers get the vaccine?
South African Medical Research Council president and lead researcher on the South African J&J trial, Glenda Gray, explained that the J&J vaccine would be rolled out at clinical trial sites or health facilities that are taking part in rigorous research studies.
These kinds of studies require health facilities to report more detailed data on the rollout than normal health facilities.
Distributing the vaccines initially through clinical trial sites will help scientists collect even more data on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy while allowing the government to assess early lessons learned.
- Has the J&J vaccine been proven to work in older people?
Yes, scientists know the vaccine works in older people because many of them participated in large-scale clinical trials of the vaccine.
Older people and those with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity are at an increased risk of developing severe Covid-19.
Almost one in three people who participated in the J&J Covid-19 vaccine study globally were over the age of 60. In South Africa, a large portion of trial vaccine participants was over the age of 55.
The J&J study produced data to show that it worked to prevent Covid-19 in older adults. “Older people should feel confident in taking the vaccine and should know that it will work for them,” says Tutu and Bekker.
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- Should people with underlying health conditions get the shot?
Yes. People with underlying health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension also participated in the J&J study.
Bekker says people with underlying health conditions should be vaccinated as soon as the jab is made available to them.
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