Head of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on coronavirus vaccine development, Professor Barry Schoub, has cautioned that vaccines are not an immediate miracle cure.
As the country experiences a second wave of rising infections, exacerbated by a new variant of the virus, there has been criticism over why a vaccine will only be available in South Africa during the second quarter of next year.
Schoub says it will be sometime before South Africans develop immunity to the virus.
“Once the vaccines arrive on our doorstep that’s not the end, it’s not going to switch of the epidemic, those first tranches will go to protect healthcare workers almost no effect on the population as such then there’s go to be the immunisation of the population universal immunisiation thats gonna take a long time, it’s gonna take months and months before we try and achieve herd immunity. “
“So it’s not that because we don’t have a vaccine we still got the epidemic. Look at the UK where they are rolling out very extensively, they having a very severe epidemic it has not switched off the epidemic by any means.”
In the video below, Professor Barry Schoub took part in a discussion on Thursday morning:
INFOGRAPHIC: COVID-19 Statistics in SA:
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