South Africa, the country with the highest cases of Coronavirus in Africa, will carry out this week’s first trial of coronavirus vaccines in Africa.
The vaccine was developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and is already being tested in Britain, where 4,000 people have signed up for the trial.
South Africa has set out to use the vaccine to vaccinate 2000 men. Fifty of the candidates have HIV.
“We began screening participants for the South African Oxford 1 Covid-19 vaccine trial last week, and the first participants will be vaccinated this week,” Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) stated in a virtual press conference.
Wits collaborates on the South African trial with the University of Oxford and with the Oxford Jenner Institute.
Brazil is planning its own pilot while the US is preparing to test another vaccine in a mass trial with up to 30,000 participants, reports AFP.
“As we enter winter in South Africa and pressure increases on public hospitals, now more than ever we need a vaccine to prevent infection by COVID-19,” Madhi said, describing the vaccine trial as a “landmark moment”.
Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize echoed Madhi ‘s fears, warning that South Africa was going through a “devastating storm” predicted to peak “in the cold winter months”
At the launch of a field hospital in the province of Eastern Cape, Mkhize said over half of the population in South Africa could be infected with the deadly virus.
“Our scientific estimation is that 60 to 70 percent of our population may be infected by coronavirus,” At the launch on Tuesday the minister said that hospitalization rates remained lower than expected.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, more than 3,500 doctors and nurses have contracted COVID-19 and at least 34 have succumbed to respiratory disease.
Though South Africa is preparing for its coronavirus vaccine trial, health officials have also stuck high hopes on dexamethasone, a generic anti-inflammatory medication that has been shown to minimize mortality among ventilated patients.