JOHANNESBURG – South Africa will start rolling out Covid-19 vaccines without the need for local permission from the shots, a step that other low- and middle-income countries expect to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus.
The Ministry of Health in South Africa said that in January the country would receive 1 million doses of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC, from the Serum Institute of India, which has an agreement to shoot produce and distribute. A second shipment of 500,000 doses is expected for February. The vaccine requires two doses to achieve its full effect.
Other countries across Subsaharan Africa and the developing world are likely to follow South Africa’s decision to circumvent local regulators in an effort to accelerate rapid fire for at least some of their citizens at greatest risk. Some do not have their own national drug approval authorities and are expected to rely on the World Health Organization certification for the implementation of Covid-19 vaccines.
The shots that South Africa ordered in India will be given to health workers, who carried the heaviest in the new cases of Covid-19. Researchers believe the new wave of infections has been exacerbated by a new, probably more transmissible variant of the coronavirus discovered in the country. In December alone, 5,000 health workers tested positive for the disease, which placed an extra burden on hospitals already struggling.
South Africa, a country of 60 million people, reported 21,832 new cases of Covid-19, its highest daily score, and 392 deaths on Wednesday. Nearly a third of coronavirus tests come back positive – an indication that the actual number of infections is likely to be much higher – and the South African Medical Research Council said it recorded nearly 7,000 excess deaths in the week of Christmas. to Covid-19.