AN INJECTION OF HOPE

Covid-19 vaccine breakthroughs offer the promise of life returning to normal. When can South Africans expect the treatment to become available?

- LESEGO SEOKWANG

IT’S being hailed as a saviour and a salvation in a year where close to 1,5 million people have died as a result of the deadliest pandemic the planet has seen since the Spanish flu in 1918 killed 50 million people.

The discovery of a vaccine has been likened to the invention of the atomic bomb in terms of scientific importance – although unlike the atomic bomb, which unleashed death and destruction, this invention could well liberate the world and see a semblance of normalcy returning to the globe.

The first breakthrough came when multinational pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc and German biotechnology company BioNTech announced they had developed a vaccine with 90% efficacy – although they later upped it to more than 94%. Shortly afterwards, biotechnology company Moderna announced its vaccine candidate also had an efficacy of 94%.

And then Oxford University in the UK, in collaboration with British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, said it too had made a breakthrough, with a vaccine with an efficacy of around 90%.

Some countries could start to roll out vaccines within weeks – an astonishing achievement when you consider that it usually takes scientists 10 years to develop a vaccine. Now they’ve done it in just a few months.

But there are hoops to jump through before things start happening in South Africa. We take a look at what’s been going on.

WHAT THE BIG GUNS ARE SAYING

Finance minister Tito Mboweni says SA has put R500 million aside to place us at the forefront of receiving vaccines when they become available.