By Newsdesk
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa’s opposition issued a statement, calling for more research on the efficacy of vaccines against the 501. V2 variant by all vaccine manufacturers that the government entered into agreements with.
This is after South Africa is trying to battle the new COVID-19 variant and hope has turned into a nightmare after news reach the country that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not particularly effective against mild to moderate disease caused by the dominant Covid-19 variant.
“The failure to efficiently procure vaccines with adequate efficacy, in time and properly administer them to the whole population will lead to mass suffering and death,” said the party.
“This can no longer be blamed on the pandemic: the mass suffering and death must be placed squarely in the hands of President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“Why should people die when there are scientifically proved medical interventions to be made If a government did not acquire available means to save lives?”
“We may find ourselves in the throes of a third wave”
Last Sunday, the department of health confirmed that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided minimal protection against the symptoms from the new Covid-19 variant.
South Africa received a batch of 1 million vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) which later discovered that it will be expiring in April.
Health minister Zweli Mkhize said the results of the vaccine’s efficacy were discovered after a small clinical trial and the country’s health minister responded that the vaccine rollout would be temporarily halted until scientists figure out what approach SA will use to effectively deploy the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“I’ve directed that our scientists must, quickly, sit together and figure out what approach we are going to use to effectively deploy the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“It must be clear when that could be done, what conditions need to be fulfilled, what we need to do about all of this. That is the assignment that is given to our scientists. They’ll figure it out,” he said.
He added that it is a temporary issue that they have to hold on to AstraZeneca.
