South Africa has scrapped its plans to vaccinate a portion of its population with the COVID-19 vaccine from Oxford University and AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) after a small study showed it was ineffective against a variant widely circulating there.
In the interim, South Africa will rely on vaccines from Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE).
Researchers at Oxford University and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa found the AstraZeneca vaccine to offer little to no protection against mild-to-moderate disease. The research has not been peer-reviewed.
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