{"id":536450,"date":"2021-11-10T12:31:54","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T10:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=536450"},"modified":"2021-11-10T12:31:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T10:31:54","slug":"doctors-raise-concerns-with-jj-covid-19-booster-shots-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/536450\/doctors-raise-concerns-with-jj-covid-19-booster-shots-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors raise concerns with J&J Covid-19 booster shots in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African Medical Association, which represents doctors, said there must be a choice of Covid-19 booster vaccine after Johnson & Johnson won the right to run research on the half a million health workers who took the company\u2019s shot in an initial study.<\/p>\n

The Sisonke trial, which gave South African health workers a vaccine ahead of a general rollout of the shots, will be extended with health workers offered a second J&J inoculation, the government said last month.<\/p>\n

SAMA, as the association is known, said it is concerned because of potential evidence that a booster in the form of a messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, vaccine such as those produced by Pfizer is potentially more effective than the second dose of a more traditional vector-based shot, such as that produced by J&J.<\/p>\n

“What is it that informs the decision to roll out the Sisonke phase 2 trial in isolation?\u201d SAMA said in an open letter<\/a><\/strong> to South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla on Wednesday. “Will health care workers be given the right to choose which booster they choose to take?\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaccine apartheid<\/strong><\/p>\n

J&J\u2019s dose uses a piece of a modified cold virus to stimulate an immune response, while mRNA vaccines use genetic material to instruct cells to defend themselves against the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

The rollout of the booster trial will begin today and the addition of a choice would delay it by six weeks, said Nicholas Crisp, deputy director-general of the South African health department.\u00a0 That would mean that health workers wouldn\u2019t get more protection ahead of a possible fourth wave of coronavirus infections starts, he said, adding that a Pfizer boost trial may be carried out later.<\/p>\n

Because offering Pfizer as an alternative would set the process back \u201cwe elected not to go that route,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cI actually am disappointed in SAMA raising this.\u201d<\/p>\n

SAMA\u2019s intervention has also created a rift with the South African Medical Research Association, which is working with J&J on the trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they are asking us to do is to experiment further on health workers. They are saying disregard the evidence and conduct a further experiment,\u201d said Glenda Gray, president of the SAMRC and co-lead of the J&J study in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people who have never conducted a vaccine trial in their life telling the public that one vaccine is better than another and creating a vaccine apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Health minister on vaccine targets and a fourth Covid-19 wave in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African Medical Association, which represents doctors, said there must be a choice of Covid-19 booster vaccine after Johnson & Johnson won the right to run research on the half a million health workers who took the company\u2019s shot in an initial study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":465686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-536450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536450"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536454,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536450\/revisions\/536454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}