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South Africa To Begin Giving COVID-19 Booster Shots Next Month

  South Africa will next month start giving Pfizer booster shots against coronavirus, a health official said Friday, a day after the country reported a … Continue reading South Africa To Begin Giving COVID-19 Booster Shots Next Month


A member of the Western Cape Metro EMS(Emergency Medical Services) prepares Pfizer vaccines from an ambulance which has been converted to facilitate vaccinations at a COVID 19 vaccination event in Manenberg, which is part of the Vaxi-Taxi mobile vaccination drive, on December 08, 2021 in Cape Town. Anti-Covid vaccines may lose effectiveness against Omicron, but one more dose could remedy this. Initial elements, notably given by the Pfizer laboratory, shed light on the capacity of the new variant to resist vaccination. Omicron is “probably not sufficiently neutralized after two doses”, admitted Wednesday the groups Pfizer and BioNTech, whose anti-Covid vaccine is given in two injections. RODGER BOSCH / AFP
A member of the Western Cape Metro EMS(Emergency Medical Services) prepares Pfizer vaccines from an ambulance which has been converted to facilitate vaccinations at a COVID 19 vaccination event in Manenberg, which is part of the Vaxi-Taxi mobile vaccination drive, on December 08, 2021 in Cape Town. 
RODGER BOSCH / AFP

 

South Africa will next month start giving Pfizer booster shots against coronavirus, a health official said Friday, a day after the country reported a near-record high in daily cases of the disease.

“The first people who will qualify for the booster dose in South Africa will be people over the age of 60 years,” Dr Nicolas Crisp, director general at the health ministry, told a weekly news conference.

Experts are working to determine whether current Covid vaccines will work against the new highly-mutated variant, which was discovered by South African scientists last month.

The daily number of new Covid infections surged to a high of 22,391 on Thursday, when nearly 30 percent of tests were positive.

The highest daily tally so far was in early July, when the country hit more than 26,000 new infections.

Health practitioners last month had already started being offered Johnson & Johnson shots as boosters.

 

A woman is vaccinated by a member of the Western Cape Metro EMS(Emergency Medical Services) in an ambulance which has been converted to facilitate vaccinations at a COVID 19 vaccination event in Manenberg.
RODGER BOSCH / AFP

 

South Africa is the worst-hit country in the continent for coronavirus, recording a cumulative 3.09 million cases, of which over 90,000 have been fatal.

A small study this week by the country’s African Health Research Institute, not yet peer-reviewed, suggested that Omicron may be able to evade some of the antibody immunity from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But, its authors said, there was no reason to believe that vaccination would not protect against severe disease caused by the variant.

Slightly more than a quarter of South Africa’s population is fully vaccinated, with the figure among adults being 43 percent.

Omicron accounts for around 70 percent of new infections being detected in South Africa, Health Minister Joe Phaahla has said.

However, hospitalised patients are so far showing mild symptoms, he said.

-AFP