South Africa’s vaccination programme for health workers is inching forward, fuelled by small deliveries of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine every two weeks.  However, overall supplies remain far short of the needs – even for the health sector.  The country has an estimated 1.25 million health workers in public and private health to serve its […] Continue reading ->
Major European nations remain divided over the use of Oxford/AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, while the pharma company said there was no evidence of increased risk of blood clotting and abnormal bleeding among people who get the vaccine.     AstraZeneca’s review of all the safety data of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union (EU) […] Continue reading ->
Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate has an efficacy rate of 96.4% against the original strain of SARS-CoV2. However, the efficacy rate drops up to 55.4% against the new B.1351 variant first identified in South Africa, and also spreading globally.  The pharma company, which has never brought a vaccine to market before, published the data from two […] Continue reading ->
African governments, the private sector, and development partners need to invest more in health and health systems to intensify the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and any future disease outbreaks, according to health experts speaking at the African Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC) on Tuesday. The experts agreed that a comprehensive, multi-sectoral approach is needed […] Continue reading ->
A senior official at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has cautioned EU member states to wait until the agency has reviewed the safety and efficacy data of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine  before granting the vaccine emergency use authorization at national level, and beginning mass rollouts. Last week, the EMA formally began a rolling review of […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization (WHO) and its COVAX partners are hosting a summit next week with governments and pharmaceutical companies to address the bottlenecks in COVID-19 vaccine production and delivery. This follows a spectacular start in the past week for COVAX, the global vaccine delivery platform, which delivered more than 20 million doses of COVID-19 […] Continue reading ->
The AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine can reduce severe COVID-19 in older adults by up to 70%, says a new Public Health England (PHE) study – which offers the first real-world evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing serious disease among older adults, following its approval by UK and European regulatory agencies.  Findings about the efficacy […] Continue reading ->
The global vaccine platform, COVAX, aims to distribute 237 million doses of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine to 142 countries by the end of May 2021, its managing partners told the media on Tuesday. Eleven million doses will be delivered this week alone, with Angola, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria getting their vaccines on […] Continue reading ->
Under cloudy skies, Ghana’s first precious doses of Covid-19 vaccines arrived Wednesday morning at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport. They are also the first supplies to be distributed by the WHO co-sponsored COVAX facility on the African continent. The arrival of some 600,000 vaccines marks a milestone in months of effort by WHO, UNICEF, GAVI and […] Continue reading ->