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Vaccine production in South Africa - Moneyweb.co.za

How an industry in its infancy can be developed.

The issue of vaccine production has become a topic of hot debate following the approval of treatments for Covid-19. In South Africa angry exchanges have been spurred by the countrys lagging access to Covid-19 vaccines. Generally, vaccines are produced by private companies who sell the vaccine under contracts. In some cases, producers will make provisions for access in particular markets. This is sometimes as a condition for receiving early development funding or for allowing parts of production to occur in a particular country. Some middle-income countries, particularly India, Argentina and Mexico, have sufficient production capacity to be partly indispensable. These countries have strategic leverage to get vaccines because of their own vaccine manufacturing capacity. India illustrates this well. The Serum Institute of India, a privately owned pharmaceutical company, is manufacturing large quantities of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca and Novavax Covid-19 vaccines. The company scheduled to reach 100 million doses produced a month by March 2021. In return, India will keep a portion of the vaccines it manufactures reportedly 100 million doses in the first instance.What about South Africas own capacity to produce vaccines? What can the country do? South Africa does not have large-scale vaccine manufacturing capability. The Biovac Institute a public-private partnership between the South African government and a consortium of South African healthcare companies is beginning to get into vaccine manufacture with an eye on more secure and accessible childhood vaccine supplies for southern Africa. But this capability is still in its infancy. Its small compared to the Covid-19 vaccine market. In addition, a publicly traded South African-owned global pharmaceutical company, Aspen Pharmaceuticals operates four pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging plants in the country. The company is also moving into the vaccine packaging market. We see a clear disconnect between what would be needed to make the Biovac Institute a strategic vaccine asset going forward and what is planned for Biovac. If South Africa is serious about supplying anti-pandemic vaccines in the future, it needs to rethink the scale of financial, technical and strategic investment into vaccine production. This investment must be made not only into the private sector, but also, critically, into publicly accountable institutions such as the Biovac Institute. Only if investment is increased, sustained, and backed by political commitment, will the country have sufficient vaccine production capacity to use as a lever to get national and regional access to future anti-pandemic vaccines. Vaccine production capacity The Biovac Institutes primary remit is to make childhood vaccines available for the southern African market, mostly for the public sector. For its part, Aspens existing pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity is about 10 billion tablets a year. It produces generic drugs (including analgesics, a proton pump inhibitor and sleeping aids), nutritional supplements (notably iron supplements) and hormones for local African markets and other middle income markets, such as Turkey. Aspen is scheduled to start producing the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine in March or April of 2021 at these facilities. It will be filling and packaging vials with vaccine product manufactured in bulk outside of South Africa. Most of the vials will be shipped back to Johnson & Johnson for international distribution. A recent announcement indicates that 9 million doses will remain in South Africa for local use. The original packaging deal between Aspen and Johnson & Johnson was announced more than two months prior. There had been no mention of a procurement deal for South Africa until pressure began to mount recently on all parties. Unlike Aspen, Biovacs remit is to provide vaccines in the public interest. Part of its mission is to provide in the long term, capacity for the development and introduction of novel vaccines, focusing on the development of vaccines relevant to South Africa and Africas particular needs. Biovacs main activity is to import, label and distribute vaccines to the South African market. For example, it has supplied six vaccines made by international vaccine manufacturers for South Africas childhood immunisation programme. It also supplies other countries in the region. Biovacs crowning achievement has been the local production (filling and packaging) of Hexaxim, a combination of six childhood vaccines from Sanofi, the French multinational pharmaceutical company. Production started very recently, in November 2020. Biovac is the first external company with which Sanofi has partnered to fill and package Hexaxim. Biovac is also planning to manufacture Prevnar-13, a vaccine made by Pfizer, the US multinational pharmaceutical company. The vaccine prevents pneumococcal disease and death. Biovac will formulate the product using components provided by Pfizer before filling and packaging the bulk vaccine. Production is due to start in the next six months. The development of local capacity for formulation of a complex vaccine marks another important step towards the establishment of vaccine manufacturing capacity in South Africa. How to be more prepared next time To be in a better position to procure anti-pandemic vaccines South Africa will need to have greater vaccine manufacturing capacity. And the country would need to be more willing to use that capacity as leverage. Scale is a key consideration. Biovac is planning to fill 4 million doses of hexaxim in 2021. This is tiny compared to Serum Institute of Indias huge capacity and to Aspens reported capacity of 300 million vaccine doses a year. Beyond scale, two other conditions need to be met. The first is simply more experience. The technology transfer for each vaccine that Biovac produces would give the company experience and technical capacity in re-tooling for formulation, filling and testing of each particular vaccine. The second is that a more savvy entrepreneurial risk-taking environment needs to be developed. This needs to be backed by political commitment in government. The Aspen example shows that the development of local manufacturing capacity is possible if enough capital is available, and if the right strategic partnerships are established. Private facilities like Aspen clearly can become leverage for local access; but, that does not seem to well assured. If Biovacs current trajectory is maintained and supported, it should be able to supply other vaccines (childhood vaccines, mostly) in the future. The strategic value of this assured supply should not be underestimated. In addition, Biovac could be one of the answers to this problem because it is a publicly accountable institution and because it can point to its remit to make vaccines accessible locally when making any production deals. But in its current incarnation and scale, Biovac wont be able to provide anti-pandemic vaccines for southern Africa. Nor can it act as a strategic asset in the way that Serum Institute of India has been for India. South Africa has about one twentieth the population of India. This means it will need its public vaccine production capacity to grow to a more modest size to be a strategic asset. Jeffrey Dorfman, associate professor in Medical Virology, Stellenbosch University and Frank Kirstein, Honorary Research Associate / Lecturer; Division of Immunology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Experts warn of third Covid-19 wave in South Africa amid vaccination delay: report - BusinessTech

A delay in South Africa’s Covid-19 vaccination programme could lead to a third wave of the virus, the Sunday Times reports.

A delay in South Africa’s Covid-19 vaccination programme could lead to a third wave of the virus, the Sunday Times reports. Vaccinologist professor Shabir Madhi told the paper that the government was late to the game in acquiring a vaccine, warning that another wave could resurface within three to four months. “It seems to me that the government only started planning in early January after a media backlash,” said Madhi, who was dropped from the Covid-19 ministerial advisory committee last year. “Even after this resurgence dies down we’ll get another one, and vaccine deployment will be too late for high-risk groups then.” Medical experts have said it remains unclear when vaccines will arrive and how they will be rolled out, with no clear plans for their distribution. Professor Mark Mendelson, head of infectious diseases at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, called the government’s targets “unrealistic”, given their late start. There is still confusion about the scale of the rollout, he said. The number of people “earmarked for vaccination in phase two is 16.6 million” but to do that, 32.4-million doses will be required, “and government tells us it has procured 20 million doses (12 million from Covax) which would still leave us 12.4 million doses short, even for phase two”. Price gouging Government is facing heavy criticism for failing to negotiate better prices for the country’s first batch of Covid-19 vaccines – which cost more than double the rate for the European and African Unions. According to leaked information from EU officials this week, the region is paying $2.16 (around R32) a dose for the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, while the African Union is getting it at $3 per dose (R45). South Africa, meanwhile, secured its batch at $5.25 per dose (R80). According to the City Press, critics and activists have laid the blame for this inflated pricing at the feet of the government – for failing to negotiate a better deal – and the suppliers, who they accuse of price gouging during a pandemic. Department of Health deputy director-general, Dr Anben Pillay, said that when the pricing was questioned, the suppliers stated that South Africa is a middle-high income country, and that is the tiered rate for the doses. The EU received better pricing because it paid for the research and development of the vaccine, he said. Government was also reportedly told that if it didn’t want the doses as that price, the supplier would be happy to take it elsewhere. “What we didn’t want to do, is push the price debate to the extent where we don’t have access (to the vaccine). It’s a supplier’s game, and we don’t want to drive the price hard and then we’re put at the bottom of the list for access,” Pillay said. Rollout strategy President Cyril Ramaphosa said last week, that the country will get an initial 20 million doses, with the first batch of 1.5 million shots of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca set to arrive this month. On Monday, Department of Health officials indicated that the country had secured an additional nine million vaccines through a deal with pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. The Johnson & Johnson deal would take the total number of doses that South Africa stands to receive to around 30 million. Bloomberg reported that South Africas regulator granted the health department permission to distribute the vaccine from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in its first nod for Covid-19 inoculations. The National Department of Health has been recognised by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority as a supplier of The Serum Institute of India, health minister Zweli Mkhize said in a statement late Friday. South Africa recently struck a deal with The Serum Institute to receive its first coronavirus vaccines this month and next. “We will, in the next coming days, engage with the public in order to give an update on the progress of the first batch of the vaccines that we committed would be received in the first quarter, the health ministry said in Fridays statement. At this stage we would like to assure South Africans that all is on track. We are working closely with all relevant stakeholders to ensure a smooth implementation of the vaccine roll-out programme. Rising infections Dr Mkhize on Saturday reported 12,271 new Covid-19 cases in South Africa, taking total cases to 1,404,839. The minister also reported a further 498 deaths, pushing the death toll to 40,574. New variants of the virus that have emerged in the UK, South Africa and Brazil are a concern, experts have warned, due to them being more contagious. An increase in infections has led to a surge in hospitalisations and deaths in the UK and South Africa. And worse still, UK prime minister Boris Johnson told a news conference on Friday in London, that new evidence had led the government to revise its initial view that the variant was more contagious, but not more dangerous. It may be 30% more deadly than the original strain – or more, a government analysis found. Drugmakers say their vaccines should still work, but some researchers warn the shots may need to be updated periodically to maintain their efficacy, Bloomberg reported. President Ramaphosa has warned that the country is out of money, despite pledging a vaccination campaign covering 67% of the population, at a cost of approximately R20 billion. Mkhize has said that about 30% will be covered by medical insurers. Read: South African regulator backs distribution of AstraZeneca shots

Pasha 92: How we discovered two new giant radio galaxies - Sierra Leone Times

Radio galaxies may be the oldest galaxy systems, providing clues to the evolution of galaxies.

A telescope in South Africa by the name of MeerKAT enabled the discovery of two giant radio galaxies recently. Finding one radio galaxy is special. Finding two is fantastic. Radio galaxies get their name from the fact that they release huge beams, or jets, of radio light. The find was made possible by the ability of a phenomenally powerful telescope called the MeerKAT to detect faint, diffuse light, which previous telescopes were unable to do. The giant radio galaxies were spotted in new radio maps of the sky created by one of the most advanced surveys of distant galaxies. The discovery will add to astronomers understanding of the evolution of galaxies since the big bang. Read more: Discovery of two new giant radio galaxies offers fresh insights into the universe In todays episode of Pasha Jacinta Delhaize, radio astronomer and SARAO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town, takes us through the finding and what it means for the future. Photo: MeerKAT radio telescope. By Morganoshell found on Wikimedia Commons Music: Happy African Village by John Bartmann, found on FreeMusicArchive.org licensed under CC0 1. Deep End by Subarachnoid Space, found on FreeMusicArchive.org licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Celestial Jerusalem by Minson, found on FreeMusicArchive.org licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License..