South Africa Rolls Out Single Dose Vaccine

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South African health care workers and President Cyril Ramaphosa received the first Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine shots delivered to the country in mid-February, as health officials fought to contain a new strain of the virus.

The 68-year-old Ramaphosa said he was nervous about being pricked by the long needle, but that the shot didn’t hurt much.

“This day represents a real milestone for us as South Africans that finally the vaccines are here, and they are being administered,” Ramaphosa said, adding that receiving the vaccine was “a fairly straightforward process.”

“I’d like to invite South Africans to take this up so that we can all be safe,” Ramaphosa said. “We can all be healthy.”

Manufactured in the United States, Johnson & Johnson’s is the first single-dose vaccine to be used outside a clinical trial, Al-Jazeera reported.

The vaccine was shown to offer 57% protection against moderate to severe COVID-19 infections caused by South Africa’s new strain, which accounts for 90% of the country’s cases, Al-Jazeera reported. It and Novavax, also an American vaccine, are the only two vaccines that have shown efficacy against the variant.

Ramaphosa’s shot was one of 80,000 doses delivered to South Africa in mid-February. Another 420,000 single-dose vaccines by Johnson & Johnson are expected to be delivered by mid-March, along with 20 million doses of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine, also manufactured in the U.S.

Officials distributed the Johnson & Johnson vaccines to each province in the country.

At Cape Town’s Khayelitsha Hospital, Zoliswa Gidi-Dyosi, a registered nurse and midwife, was the first of nearly 400 health care workers to receive the vaccine. Premier Alan Winde said the 13,000 doses delivered to the Western Cape would be administered within a week.

“I have been so heartened to see photos of health care workers being vaccinated this week and to hear early reports that they are feeling well and are back at work,” Winde told South Africa’s Independent Online (IOL).

Dr. Samantha Potgieter, an infectious disease expert who works in the COVID-19 ward at Universitas Hospital in Bloemfontein, was the first person to receive the vaccine in Free State province.

“The idea was to vaccinate a few people to make sure everything is in place,” Potgieter told IOL. “To check our systems, to make sure we can safely vaccinate others. It’s extremely important to vaccinate health care workers” from exposure to the virus and preserve the workforce.

Mondli Mvambi, spokesperson for the Free State Health Department, said health officials encouraged all health care workers to be vaccinated to help build herd immunity.

“Building a herd immunity in the Free State means that 67% of the population, which is 1.9 million of the 2.9 million in the Free State, will be vaccinated to ensure that they are safe from getting the virus,” Mvambi told IOL.

Millanie Bennet, the nurse who administered Ramaphosa’s shot, expected to be vaccinated within a week of inoculating the president. She urged all health care workers in the country to get the vaccine.

“We are now part of making history by fighting COVID-19 through the vaccine,” Bennett told IOL. “The vaccine will save countless lives.”