South Africa stops the rollout of AstraZeneca vaccine due to disappointing trial results. “Does not work against mild and moderate illness,” Prof Shabir Madhi said

AstraZeneca vaccine is beset with lots of bad news in recent months. On January 31, the City of Manaus reported that elderly people died after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. According to the report, an 83-year-old male died after receiving a dose of AstraZeneca immuno-suppressant on Friday, January 29, 2021.

Now, South Africa is halting the vaccine rollout after it was found that AstraZeneca jab was ineffective at combating mutant COVID-19. The decision came after a new study suggests that AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford, is significantly less effective at preventing patients from being infected by a new “variant” – aka mutant – strain first isolated in South Africa.

According to a report from BBC, South Africa’s Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Sunday that the government would await advice on how best to proceed following the disappointing trial data on the 501Y.V2 variant that caused the second wave of infections starting late last year.

The trial’s chief investigator, Prof Shabir Madhi, said it showed that “unfortunately, the AstraZeneca vaccine does not work against mild and moderate illness.” Meanwhile, Prof Sarah Gilbert, Oxford’s lead vaccine developer, told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday:

“What we’re seeing from other vaccine developers is that they have a reduction in efficacy against some of the variant viruses and what that is looking like is that we may not be reducing the total number of cases, but there’s still protection in that case against deaths, hospitalizations and severe disease.”

You can watch the video below.

Oxford Vaccine lead researcher Prof Sarah Gilbert tells #Marr the #CoronavirusVaccine has a "reduction in efficacy" against the South African variant but "there is still protection against deaths, hospitalisations and severe disease"https://t.co/bQfOn3vEfS pic.twitter.com/g7dX4oO7D6

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 7, 2021