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Geoffrey York

7 Jan, 10 tweets, 2 min read

South Africa will receive one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in January and 500,000 further doses in February, sufficient for all of its health workers, Health Minister Mkhize announced today. The vaccine doses will be provided by the Serum Institute of India.

The Serum Institute of India produces the AstraZeneca (Oxford) vaccine under license. It has already produced some 70 million doses. The vaccine still needs SAHPRA approval, which is being expedited.

South Africa’s estimated 1.25 million health workers, in the public and private sectors, will receive priority access to the vaccine doses as they arrive.

As noted by many people already, the AstraZeneca vaccine is a two-dose vaccine. So the 1.5 million doses would be enough for two-shot protection for 750,000 health workers. However, if further doses are expected, SA could begin with one-shot protection for all health workers.

There is considerable debate in the UK already on whether to prioritize a two-shot strategy or whether to begin with one shot for as many people as possible.

From the NY Times: "Instead of administering the two vaccine shots within a month as was originally planned, clinicians in Britain will wait as long as 12 weeks to give people second doses, the government said."

"Clinical trials of AstraZeneca had already subjected participants to delayed 2nd doses. Most were given the 2 doses at least 9 weeks apart. British regulators say the first dose had 73% efficacy in protecting against COVID in the period between that shot and a second shot..."

On the issue of regulatory approval, the minister says there will be no "unnecessary delays or regulatory impediments." The vaccine is already approved in other countries, which will speed up the approval process in SA.

Minister's statement: "We are happy that the SII/AstraZeneca vaccine has already been approved by various regulators and is being rolled out in other countries. Therefore, as part of expediting the regulatory process,
SAHPRA is applying reliance on that regulatory work."

https://twitter.com/geoffreyyork/status/1346823034913615873?s=20

We should note that Carol Paton, in Business Day yesterday, was (as far as I know) the first to report the pending deal under negotiation between SA and the Serum Institute of India.

https://twitter.com/geoffreyyork/status/1346823034913615873?s=20

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Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

5 Jan

Canadian PM Trudeau says he spoke to SA President Ramaphosa today. He says they promised to "stand together" to "fight the virus" and "ensure no-one gets left behind as we rebuild".
No details on what that might mean. No mention of vaccine access. No statement from SA so far.

For background: Canada ordered more than 400 million doses of various vaccines -- more than 5 times what it needed. It has promised to redistribute the surplus to the COVAX program, but has not indicated when it might do so.

PM Trudeau's comments can be found here, beginning at the 4:58 mark of the video:
cpac.ca/en/direct/cpac…
(Unfortunately he seems unclear on the correct pronunciation of President Ramaphosa's name.)

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Geoffrey York

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24 Dec 20

@krisp_news

South African science was crucial in helping UK discover its new variants; but then the UK govt claimed (wrongly) that the SA variant is more transmissible. No evidence to support this, according to @krisp_news scientists.
thetimes.co.uk/article/new-co…

From the Times article: SA scientists "were the first to recognize the importance of a genetic change in the spike protein, something that allows the virus to attach more easily to human cells, making it more infectious than the original version."

The SA discovery was shared on Dec 4 over the WHO’s Covid-19 Evolution Working Group. “Our British colleagues were able to go back to their own databases and interrogate them as a result of the work we shared,” Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at Krisp, said.

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Geoffrey York

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22 Jul 20

Latest weekly report on excess deaths in South Africa: now estimated at 17,090 since early May.
Note: only a fraction of these deaths are directly due to COVID. Please read the caveats and explanations here:
samrc.ac.za/sites/default/…

From the report: "Although the bulk of these estimates of the ‘excess deaths’ are likely to be due to COVID-19 and related causes, an unknown proportion may be due other natural causes associated with a relaxing of lockdown."

Summary of trends: "Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal are experiencing an excess number of natural deaths. The sharp increase noted in the previous report in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape have continued."

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Geoffrey York

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6 Jun 20

Yesterday the DA Premier of Western Cape told people with symptoms to "take quarantine and isolation very seriously."
On the same day, the DA national leader said: "Fact 1: Covid does not pose a significant risk to healthy 0-65 year-olds."
Which DA are we to believe?

My question about DA messaging is this: when they are telling people that the virus is not a big risk, aren't they undermining their own Premier? And won't it complicate the task of persuading symptomatic people to voluntarily isolate? Why isolate if it's not a big risk?

The national DA continues to claim that COVID is no worse than the flu, for most people. (This was claimed repeatedly in the national leader's statement yesterday.) The Western Cape premier, in contrast, has never made this claim. And with good reason:

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