South Africa set to participate in two more Covid-19 vaccine trials

South Africa is all set to participate in two more COVID-19 vaccine trials by leading pharmaceutical companies starting next month.

Dr Glenda Gray, president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, said in an interview with the public interest health website Spotlight on Tuesday that a Johnson & Johnson product called Ad26.COV2-S and a Novavax product called NVX-CoV2373 will be trialled in the country.

The first COVID-19 vaccine trial on the African continent was the Ox1Cov-19 Vaccine VIDA trial, a collaboration with Oxford University, which was started in June in South Africa. It is led by Professor in Vaccinology at Wits University Shabir Madhi.

Madhi, who is also the lead investigator for the Novavax trial in South Africa, told Spotlight that the Novavax trial to be conducted in South Africa will be a Phase IIb trial, which would measure efficacy, but not to the extent required for registration, for which a Phase III trial is typically needed.

The total of the three vaccine trials in which South Africa will now be participating are all part of the 26 identified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the most viable candidate vaccines to go into human clinical trials from among the 139 globally that are being tested in laboratories or on animals.

Gray said approval from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and ethics committee approval was in progress.

Up to 12,000 South African volunteers will be vaccinated at 30 sites, while 60,000 people in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Peru will also participate in the trial.

"We know a lot about this pathogen already and its use in making vaccines. The Ad26 backbone has been used for Ebola, Zika and HIV. So we know what it looks like," Gray said.

In South Africa, the efficacy and safety of the candidate vaccine will be tested in healthy adults aged 18 and older, and they will receive a single vaccine.

"We will include HIV-infected people but not pregnant women. Initially, we won't include people with comorbidities (such as diabetes), but as we get more data, they will be included," the CEO said.

Gray said they were hoping for an efficacy rate of above 50 per cent, but cautioned that it would take at least a year to get answers very fast, given that most research on vaccines takes at least four years before you get a result.

As of August 11, the South African Health Department said there were 566,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, with 10,751 deaths and 426,125 recoveries.