South Africa, the country with the highest Coronavirus cases in Africa, will roll out the first coronavirus vaccine trial in Africa this week.
The vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, was developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute and it is already being evaluated in Britain, where 4,000 participants have signed up for the trial.
South Africa has set out to vaccinate 2,000 people with the vaccine. Fifty of the candidates have HIV.
“We began screening participants for the South African Oxford 1 Covid-19 vaccine trial last week, and the first participants will be vaccinated this week,” University of Witwatersrand (Wits) vaccinology professor Shabir Madhi told a virtual press conference.
Wits is collaborating with the University of Oxford and the Oxford Jenner Institute on the South African trial.
Brazil is planning its own pilot, while the United States is preparing to test another vaccine in a mass trial of up to 30,000 participants, AFP reports.
“As we…
Source: Linda Ikeji
