A facility in Cape Town could produce Africa\u2019s first vaccines using messenger RNA, the breakthrough science of the global inoculation effort against Covid-19, within 15 months of signing a technology transfer agreement.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization this week announced it will establish its first-ever mRNA technology transfer hub in the city in an agreement with\u00a0Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines\u00a0and the\u00a0Biovac Institute.<\/p>\n
The global health body is in talks with potential partners who would work with the South African companies to produce the vaccines to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic in the world\u2019s least-vaccinated continent.<\/p>\n
While talks are being held with large companies that already have mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, most negotiations are taking place with smaller firms that are still trialling the shots, Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO\u2019s chief scientist, said.<\/p>\n
Pfizer, together with its partner BioNTech, and Moderna are the two groups globally with approved mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe target given to us, which is quite ambitious, is 12 months to put the first candidate into clinical trials from the day of technology transfer signing,\u201d and those trials could take about three months, said Petro Terblanche, the managing director of Afrigen, in an interview on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s only possible if the technology partner is one of the big gorillas\u201d and will take a bit longer if it\u2019s a small company, she said.<\/p>\n
The push by the WHO is an attempt to boost vaccine manufacturing in Africa as richer nations have hoarded Covid-19 inoculations, leaving few for the continent, which is in the grip of a third wave of coronavirus infections.<\/p>\n
While the US and the UK have fully vaccinated more than 45% of their populations, just more than 1% of Africa\u2019s 1.2 billion people have received a full course of Covid-19 shots.<\/p>\n