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South African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare has announced a deal with U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, if it’s accepted in South Africa and internationally.
In a statement issued on Monday, Aspen said that if ongoing trials bring global health authorities to endorse the J&J vaccine as safe and effective, it could be produced in Aspen”s manufacturing facility in Port Elizabeth in South Africa”s Eastern Cape province.
The company said the facility has a capacity to manufacture over 300 million doses of the vaccine a year.
Johnson & Johnson”s test vaccine, Ad26.COV3-S, is one of four different vaccines currently undergoing clinical trials in South Africa.
Johnson & Johnson will be responsible for providing the vaccine in large batches and Aspen would put it into vials and package it for individual dosages, pending a final commercial arrangement, ” said the statement issued by Aspen.
Aspen chief executive Stephen Saad said the company has invested more than 3 billion rand ($184 million) in its South African facility and has a history of supplying drugs for the treatment of HIV/Aids and multi-drug-resistant TB.
The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in South Africa did not increase over the previous two weeks, going from 2.73 new cases per 100,000 people on Oct. 18 to 2.64 new cases per 100,000 people on Nov. 1.
The country has a total of 726,823 cases, representing more than 40% of all cases recorded in Africa, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In July protesters demonstrated in Johannesburg against vaccine trials of a vaccine being tested by the University of Oxford, in which about 2,000 people were expected to participate.
The protesters told The Associated Press then that people chosen as volunteers for the trials were from impoverished backgrounds and not fully aware of the potential dangers associated with clinical trials. However, academics running the trials said that all those participating were given considerable information regarding the trial and had to take an examination about the trial and pass a speed of 80% Experts told a United Nations webinar in June this year that misinformation about testing fueled anti-vaccine sentiment in Africa.
