South Africa has put on hold the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine after study revealed that the vaccine did not protect clinical-trial participants from mild or moderate illness caused by the more contagious COVID-19 virus variant ( B.1.351) that was first seen there.

The country’s Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Sunday that the government would await advice from scientists on how best to proceed.

The development came a week after a million doses of the vaccine were delivered in the country, where more than 46,000 people have so far died from the novel coronavirus and the variants.

The B.1.351 variant has already spread to at least 32 countries according to reports. It was not clear from the studies whether the vaccine protected against severe disease from the B.1.351 variant.

AstraZeneca on Saturday had said it believed its vaccine could protect against severe disease and that it had already started adapting it against the 501Y.V2 variant.

Professor Shabir Madhi, lead investigator on the AstraZeneca trial in South Africa, stated that data on the vaccine were a reality check and that it was time to “recalibrate our expectations of COVID-19 vaccines”.

South Africa hoped to vaccinate 40 million people or two-thirds of the population, to achieve some level of large immunity but encountered this setback.  

It was further stated that the country hoped to roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine to healthcare workers soon after on Monday receiving 1 million doses produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII).

Instead, it will offer health workers vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer/BioNTech in the coming weeks.

Mkhize on an online news briefing disclosed that “What does that mean for our vaccination programme which we said will start in February? The answer is it will proceed.

“From next week for the next four weeks we expect that there will be J&J vaccines, there will be Pfizer vaccines.”