South Africa cancels 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine due to contamination incident

South African officials announced that 2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were thrown away after vaccine production materials at a manufacturing plant in Baltimore (USA) encountered a contamination incident.

South Africa throws away 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine due to contamination incident. Photo: Reuters According to RT (Russia) news agency (Russia), the South African Health Products Administration (SAHPRA) has decided not to deploy vaccination for 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine being stored at a facility in the city of Gqeberha. , as the raw materials for their production were affected by a contamination incident at the factory in Baltimore (USA). The decision comes after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that millions of doses of vaccine produced at Johnson & Johnson’s Emergent BioSolutions facility in the US city of Baltimore were not suitable for use in the United States. use. “Based on what has been announced by the FDA, batches of vaccines being stored in our Gqeberha have been affected. The batches of these vaccines correspond to about 2 million doses,” South Africa’s Acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said on June 13. These doses of the vaccine have not and will not be used to immunize South Africans, she added. SAHPRA chief executive, Dr Boitumelo Semete, also confirmed the batch of vaccines “cannot be widely distributed.” Meanwhile, South Africa’s health watchdog said in a statement that a new batch of about 300,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved by the FDA and will be shipped to South Africa at a later date. some point. The agency did not disclose the exact date the shipments arrived. However, Mr. Semete acknowledged that the problem with Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine had a significant negative impact on South Africa’s vaccine deployment strategy. As of June 13, South Africa, the country hardest hit by the COVID-19 epidemic in Africa, has recorded about 1.7 million cases of COVID-19 and over 57,000 deaths. However, the country with a population of about 58.5 million people has only injected 183,000 doses of the vaccine to its people, as of June 9, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). South Africa is also one of the countries that is campaigning to give up patents for a COVID-19 vaccine to allow all countries to produce generic versions at low cost. “If we want to save lives and end the pandemic, we need to expand and diversify our production, put medical products into treatment, and fight and stop the pandemic for as many people as possible,” the president said. South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa speaks at a meeting with G7 countries in the UK on June 13.