South Africa plans to roll out the continent's first coronavirus vaccine trial this week as the country grapples with the highest number of coronaviru
South Africa plans to roll out the continent’s first coronavirus vaccine trial this week as the country grapples with the highest number of coronavirus cases in Africa. The vaccine candidate, developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute in the United Kingdom, is already being evaluated there, where 4,000 participants have signed up for the trial.
In South Africa, the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) is collaborating with the University of Oxford and the Oxford Jenner Institute in the trial of the vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. The pilot will involve 2,000 people, including 50 who have HIV.
“We began screening participants for the South African Oxford 1 COVID-19 vaccine trial last week, and the first participants will be vaccinated this week,” Wits vaccinology professor Shabir Madhi told a virtual news conference.
South Africa’s coronavirus cases jumped to more than 100,000 on Monday, while the number of related deaths approached 2,000.
Officials implemented a strict nationwide lockdown on March 27 but in recent weeks, confinement measures are being gradually phased out to allow business to pick up and limit the damage to an already ailing economy.
More than 3,500 doctors and nurses in the country have contracted COVID-19, the highly infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus, since the start of the pandemic, and at least 34 have succumbed to the respiratory disease.
