The South African government’s decision was announced this morning; the country is already going through its third wave of coronavirus.
In the middle of its vaccination campaign against Covid-19, and given the shortage that is registered in the world due to the high demand and a production of drugs that is not enough, South Africa reported that had to discard two million Jansen vaccines, which are developed by the Johnson & Johnson company, due to a “problem” during their manufacture in the United States.
The country, which has just entered a third wave of coronavirus infections, “Made the decision not to distribute the vaccines”, which had been “produced from batches of inappropriate medicinal components”South African drug production regulator Saphra explained in a statement.
The South African Minister of Health, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, who recognized a setback in the vaccination program, said yesterday that the affected batches are stored in a laboratory in Port Elizabeth (south of the country).
For their part, last Friday, the US authorities said that “several batches”, equivalent to several million doses, manufactured in Baltimore were going to have to be discarded because certain tests carried out revealed that components of the British AstraZeneca vaccine, produced in the United States. same place, they were mistakenly mixed with the Johnson & Johnson formula.
South Africa, with a population of 59 million, has delivered 31 million units of this single-dose immunizing agent. He also got 30 million from Pfizer’s injectable, which requires two doses and must be stored at very low temperatures.
This is not the first problem the South African government has faced with the drug. In April, it had to temporarily suspend the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after some cases of blood clots were detected in the United States.
Also in February, the authorities also gave up more than 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca, doubting its effectiveness against the local variant of the virus.
South Africa, the African country hardest hit by the pandemic with almost 58,000 deaths from more than 1.7 million infections, has so far vaccinated just over 1% of its population.
Third wave
Last Thursday South Africa entered “technically” in a third wave of the pandemic, with more than 9,000 new infections in the last 24 hours, as announced by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).
The figures for the last seven days indicate that the country “Technically entered the third wave”The entity, which collects Covid figures daily, explained in a tweet.
South Africa is the country most affected by the coronavirus on the continent. At the end of 2020, it suffered a second wave that caused more than 10,000 new infections a day.
Against this backdrop, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced at the end of May a return to stricter measures, such as an extension of the curfew, the closure of non-essential businesses at 10 p.m. and limits on public gatherings.
At the continental level, Africa reports more than 5 million cases since the beginning of the outbreak. However, these positives only reflect a part of the actual number of infections as diagnostic tests and tracking methods vary from country to country and are often insufficient.
The continent is under threat of an imminent third wave and is the only region in the world where the pandemic advanced last week, in which 30% more cases were registered than the previous week. In the world, the number of infections decreased by 14% in the same period.
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