{"id":3705,"date":"2021-10-21T16:11:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T14:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/?p=3705"},"modified":"2021-10-21T16:11:43","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T14:11:43","slug":"if-sa-had-rolled-out-astrazeneca-vaccine-up-to-22-000-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-prof-madhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/articles\/if-sa-had-rolled-out-astrazeneca-vaccine-up-to-22-000-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-prof-madhi\/","title":{"rendered":"If SA had rolled out AstraZeneca vaccine, up to 22 000 deaths could have been prevented \u2013 Prof Madhi"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 fusion-flex-container nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-padding-right:0px;--awb-padding-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start fusion-flex-content-wrap\" style=\"max-width:1248px;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;--awb-width-large:100%;--awb-margin-top-large:0px;--awb-spacing-right-large:1.92%;--awb-margin-bottom-large:20px;--awb-spacing-left-large:1.92%;--awb-width-medium:100%;--awb-order-medium:0;--awb-spacing-right-medium:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-medium:1.92%;--awb-width-small:100%;--awb-order-small:0;--awb-spacing-right-small:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-small:1.92%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-column-has-shadow fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\"><div class=\"fusion-image-element \" style=\"--awb-margin-bottom:30px;--awb-caption-title-font-family:var(--h2_typography-font-family);--awb-caption-title-font-weight:var(--h2_typography-font-weight);--awb-caption-title-font-style:var(--h2_typography-font-style);--awb-caption-title-size:var(--h2_typography-font-size);--awb-caption-title-transform:var(--h2_typography-text-transform);--awb-caption-title-line-height:var(--h2_typography-line-height);--awb-caption-title-letter-spacing:var(--h2_typography-letter-spacing);\"><span class=\" fusion-imageframe imageframe-none imageframe-1 hover-type-none\" style=\"border:1px solid #dedede;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wordpress21\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vaccinations_600x450px.jpg\" alt class=\"img-responsive\"\/><\/span><\/div><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1 custom-list\"><ul>\n<li><strong>SA sold 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this year<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The WHO also recommended that countries continue using the vaccine, even where new variants were circulating.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>According to Prof Shabir Madhi, it could have prevented up to 22 000 Covid deaths, mainly in older patients.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-2 custom-list\"><p>In February this year, South Africa sold its 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid vaccine after local evidence indicated that it was only minimally protective against mild to moderate disease caused by the Beta variant that was dominating the country\u2019s second wave of infections.<\/p>\n<p>The decision was criticised by local scientists. Not only did the study use only a small sample of some 2 000 participants, but the vaccine could still have offered protection against severe disease, hospitalisation and death \u2013 which is the main purpose of the Covid vaccines.<\/p>\n<p>The doses were sold to 20 African countries via the African Union (AU). Former minister of health Zweli Mkhize said that these countries would benefit more from the vaccine since the Beta variant wasn\u2019t circulating there,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/news24\/southafrica\/news\/sa-to-sell-astrazeneca-vaccines-to-african-union-to-help-20-countries-vaccinate-health-staff-20210224\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News24 reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But this decision was \u201cquite intriguing\u201d, said Professor Shabir Madhi, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Madhi led the South African arm of the Covid AstraZeneca vaccine trial.<\/p>\n<p>He was speaking at a virtual webinar hosted by the University of Cape Town on 16 September.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018Highly questionable\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201c[South Africa] decided to sell it off to the African Union, and the African Union then distributed the same vaccine to other African countries where the Beta variant was also circulating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Madhi added: \u201cClearly, the morality of the South African government to sell off a vaccine to other African countries where the Beta variant was also circulating \u2013 but wasn\u2019t identified because they don\u2019t have the capacity to do sequencing \u2013 is highly questionable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In March 2021, six of SA\u2019s leading medical scientists, including Madhi, wrote an editorial that was published in the\u00a0<em>South African Medical Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSending the AstraZeneca vaccine to other African countries raises deep ethical concerns. The [Beta] variant has been detected throughout Africa and may be responsible for the devastating second wave many countries have just experienced. If the South African authorities truly believed that the AstraZeneca vaccine did not work, why was it sold to the African Union?\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n<p>It was a decision that was also not supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), who made a firm recommendation that the two-dose vaccine should still be used in countries where new variants were circulating.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why the WHO made this recommendation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to Madhi, there were animal model data suggesting that the vaccine protected against Beta-variant severe Covid infection.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to that, data from Canada emerged showing that the AstraZeneca vaccine, even after a single dose, provided 80% protection against hospitalisation and death due to the Beta and Gamma (first identified in Brazil) variants, said Madhi. These two variants share similar characteristics in the context of mutations and susceptibility to antibody activity induced by the vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we basically sold off a vaccine, which WHO recommended South Africa uses, and ended up with a scenario where the vaccine actually does do what the WHO said it would do, [which is] to protect against hospitalisation and death.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd at the same time, we ended up with the Delta variant rising, which the vaccine works equally well against, even after a single dose, where you\u2019ve got 80% protection against hospitalisation and death,\u201d said Madhi.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Diminished public trust<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are consequences to this,\u201d said Madhi about the sale, in that it created confusion among the public and lowered their trust in the vaccine. If South Africa were to reintroduce the vaccine, they may have trouble in getting people to actually take the jab.<\/p>\n<p>After the doses were sold to the AU, some of the African countries\u2019 populations did not want to use it, leading the doses to expire. The decision, therefore, had both direct and indirect consequences.<\/p>\n<p>The AstraZeneca vaccine has been administered in more than 180 countries, including the UK.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thousands of lives could have been saved<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to an analysis done by Madhi, had the 1.5 million doses of the vaccines been used when they arrived in South Africa, thousands of lives may have been saved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe would basically have prevented 18 000 \u2013 22 000 people above the age of 60 dying due to Covid. Those are people that would actually have been vaccinated and those deaths would\u2019ve been prevented, had they been vaccinated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2021,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/south-africa-failed-to-get-its-act-together-on-vaccines-heres-how-153384\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Madhi wrote<\/a>\u00a0that the missteps in South Africa\u2019s vaccination strategy would probably cause the country to experience another one to two resurgences of cases before a substantial proportion of the population was immunised.<\/p>\n<p>What followed was a deadly third wave of cases descending on South Africa, and experts have already warned that the country may face a fourth wave at the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>According to Madhi, this is a sobering fact. \u201cWe need to understand the consequences of our actions and poor decision-making in the country, especially when we go against the advice which WHO experts provided,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-3\"><p><em>Source : https:\/\/www.news24.com\/health24\/medical\/infectious-diseases\/coronavirus\/if-sa-had-rolled-out-astrazeneca-vaccine-up-to-22-000-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-prof-madhi-20210917<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,58,82],"tags":[12,13,91],"class_list":["post-3705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-news","category-blog","tag-covid-19","tag-vaccine-coverage","tag-astrazeneca"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3706,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions\/3706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wits-vida.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}