South African scientists have urged the public to be alive to fake news about vaccines being dangerous.
In Norway, rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine took place among residents of care homes, including those with serious underlying disease.
A Facebook post was then shared multiple times, saying 23 people had died because of the vaccine.
However, Reuters reported that, “on average, 400 die each week in nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the Nordic country” and “it is thus expected that some among the population would die from unrelated causes after receiving the vaccine”.
Prof Mosa Moshabela, dean of nursing and public health at UKZN, said the way deaths are reported is “highly problematic”.
Fact-checking is “crucial”, he said, adding that some media houses have reported on deaths in clinical trials without mentioning that by far the majority of those who have died were in the control group and had not even received the vaccine.
He said such “misreporting” is highly irresponsible.
Moshabela was speaking at a webinar this week hosted by the ECHO Project and National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), where he was joined by other experts.
We need to remember that vaccines and clean water are the two most important interventions ever in the history of public health.
— Professor Barry Schoub
Prof Barry Schoub, who heads the vaccine component of the ministerial advisory committee, said: “We are on virgin soil epidemically. There is no pre-existing immunity, which is why it has spread throughout the world. We need to remember that vaccines and clean water are the two most important interventions ever in the history of public health.”
He said vaccines raise the immunity level in a population, but the population response ranges from “eager” to “hesitant” to “anti”.
Those eager for vaccines have to be reminded that they are “not a switch that ends a pandemic” and that we still have to keep up non-pharmaceutical protocols such as handwashing, social distancing, ventilation and masks.
“Hesitant vaxxers” are the ones with “legitimate concerns”, who are open to being educated about the science behind vaccines.
Schoub added: “Anti-vaxxers are the ones who buy into science-fiction tales like the one about a microchip being inserted into our bodies. We just need to engage them and say: ‘There is reality — and then there is science fiction’.”
Prof Doug Wassenaar, a bioethics expert from UKZN, said: “In South Africa we are lucky to have an extremely well-regulated structure in place. In the course of testing, after something has been approved for trials, every single adverse effect, no matter how big or small, is submitted for scrutiny. We stop studies if we are not happy with the safety data.”
He said rigorous analysis is sometimes frustrating for scientists because it slows things down, “but we have to assure the public that it is safe, and even once a product is on the market, there is ongoing monitoring”.
Prof Koleka Mlisana, from the NHLS, said: “As a country we have got systems in place that look at science rigorously and thus nothing about this is going to change in our process with the Covid-19 vaccine.”
She added: “We are also at an advantage because the vaccines are already being rolled out in other countries and even more data will accumulate.”
The vaccines have developed more quickly than usual, but not at the expense of rigour, she said.
This happened because “we have now realised you can overlap studies”, thanks to advanced technology and knowledge.
This means different phases of the trial can overlap, thanks to “frequent analysis to make sure they’re safe”.
She added: “There is no step that is going to be overlooked.”
However, Dr Esthras Confidence Moloko, a general practitioner in private practice, who was in the public sector, said there is an overemphasis on vaccine rollout at the expense of more important lines of defence.
“South Africa is losing its war against the Covid-19 epidemic because of its failure to implement the fundamentals of public health and not because of the absence of vaccines.”
He added that an example is how identification and isolation of cases at primary health-care facilities and in rural areas has not been prioritised.
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