South Africa is to suspend the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after data showed it gives minimal protection against mild to moderate infections caused by the country's dominant coronavirus variant.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Sunday that the government would wait for advice from scientists on how best to proceed, after disappointing results in a trial conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand.
The government had intended to roll the AstraZeneca jab out to healthcare workers soon, after receiving one million doses produced by the Serum Institute of India on Monday, reports Reuters.
Instead, it will offer vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer in the coming weeks while experts consider how the AstraZeneca vaccine can be deployed.
"What does that mean for our vaccination programme which we said will start in February? The answer is it will proceed," Mkhize told an online news briefing.
"From next week for the next four weeks we expect that there will be J&J vaccines, there will be Pfizer vaccines. So what will be available to the health workers will be those vaccines."
"The AstraZeneca vaccine will remain with us... up until the scientists give us clear indications as to what we need to do," he added.
This comes as Oxford University researchers working on a new coronavirus vaccine to combat the South African variant have today said they are hopeful it will be ready to use by autumn.
Oxford vaccine lead researcher Professor Sarah Gilbert said her team has "a version with the South African spike sequence in the works".
