File image. Picture: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)
CAPE TOWN – Professor Ameena Goga, who is the co-principal investigator for the Sisonke implementation study for the rollout of the Johson & Johnson vaccine, has dismissed claims that there are multiple hospital cases of healthcare workers due to the vaccine.
Goga said their investigations showed that the majority of the hospitalisations were not related to the J&J vaccine.
“All hospitalised cases are fully investigated to assess whether they are related to the vaccine. The majority have not been related to the vaccine. Less than a handful have been associated with allergic reactions. However, we have not seen any anaphylaxis at all,” Goga told IOL.
“As of March 5, 41 out of 167 000 vaccinees reported hospitalisation. On follow-up by the safety team, only 18 had a true hospitalisation. Another investigation we conducted also showed that 12 of these hospitalisations were not related to vaccination.
“Five were allergic reactions that have now been resolved. One hospitalisation is still under investigation,” she said.
According to the Sisonke patient information leaflet, in a small subset of 10 000 healthcare workers, participants will need to give a nasal or nasopharyngeal swab and a small blood sample before they start, at three months and at the end of the study at six months.
However, all the healthcare workers IOL spoke to, revealed that no blood was drawn prior to the vaccine being administered as stated.
In her explanation, Goga said the sub-study had not yet started as the amendment is still under discussion and will be submitted to the Ethics Committees and South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) once it is finalised.
Meanwhile, a group of scientists and doctors have issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding Covid-19 vaccines or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.
The letter describes serious potential consequences of Covid-19 vaccine technology, warning of possible autoimmune reactions, blood clotting abnormalities, stroke and internal bleeding, “including in the brain, spinal cord and heart”.
The authors request evidence that each medical danger outlined “was excluded in preclinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.”
“We are supportive, in principle, of the use of new medical interventions. However, there are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the Covid-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute ‘human experimentation’, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code,” the letter states.
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