From the Editor: Not all doom and gloom

Not all doom and gloom

This is the good NEWS – Ed

The past few weeks have resulted in a dizzying amount of information regarding the various Covid-19 vaccines and their efficacy, especially against the South African variant of the disease.

Much of the news has unfortunately been disheartening, with the South African Government putting a halt to the distribution of the one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine we received only a week ago. Together with this, leading vaccine scientists are calling for a rethink of the goals of vaccination programmes, saying that the achievement of herd immunity through vaccination is unlikely because of the emergence of variants like we have in South Africa.

This came as the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca acknowledged that their vaccine will not protect people against mild to moderate Covid-19 illness caused by the South African variant.

Click the newspaper below to read more (see page 8).