South Africa will suspend use of one of the Covid-19 vaccines that New Zealand has pre-purchased millions of doses of, over concerns it may not be fully protective against a new variant. The variant, first identified in South Africa in mid-November, has since been confirmed in cases in New Zealand's borders. The results showed that, while the vaccine had high efficacy against the original coronavirus non-B.1.351 variants in South Africa, its effects on the new strain was substantially reduced. The first purchase agreement was for 1.5 million vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech, which MedSafe granted provisional approval for last week. An in-principle agreement has been signed with Janssen Pharmaceutica to purchase up to 5 million vaccines - likely to be a single dose.

Source: New Zealand Herald February 07, 2021 21:59 UTC