Let’s hope vaccine trials are successful

It’s refreshing to hear South Africa has ramped up their vaccine trials, with Free State and KwaZulu-Natal joining Gauteng and the Western Cape as provinces to tackle the pandemic.

We have come a long way since President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a nationwide lockdown from 26 March. Today marks the first day of Level 1, where a number of restrictions enforced by government in an attempt to combat the Covid-19 pandemic have been eased. Most industries are open, the curfew has been relaxed and there are changes to public gatherings.

Ramaphosa last week noted that we are now recording less than 2 000 cases a day – a huge improvement from the peak of the coronavirus in the country where the infection rate was about 12 000 new cases a day. We also now have a recovery rate of 89%.

While we certainly shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves as there is still a long way to go, a change to Level 1 is encouraging, and news of vaccine trials being implemented in other provinces is even more promising.

So what are these vaccine trials all about?

Thousands of volunteers will take part in an extensive Covid-19 study. The Novavax vaccine in the South African trial leverages technology used successfully to develop vaccines against influenza (flu) virus and experimental vaccines against Ebola and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

Wits University’s executive director of the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit professor Shabir Madhi, who is leading the Ox1nCov19 trial in South Africa, said: “The important thing about testing is that you don’t test for the sake of counting cases.

“Testing has to be underpinned by strategy, otherwise it is meaningless. If you are testing in a community, you should be able to immediately place people into quarantine.”

These are tough times indeed. We need good news daily. Let’s hope these trials will bear fruit.

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