Mozambique’s National Institute of Health (INS) today began a clinical trial to evaluate the combination of two different vaccines against covid-19, the entity announced.
The study will assess the safety and immunogenicity of a regimen using the Vero Cell and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, administered 28 days apart, said Ilesh Jani, director-general of the National Institute of Health, during the launch of the research in Marracuene district, Maputo province.
The research is led by INS and is funded by the Coalition for Innovation in Epidemic Response Preparedness (CEPI), and supported by the International Vaccine Institute (IVI).
For the director-general of the National Institute of Health of Mozambique, if the research results are found to be effective, the country will have a new response to the problems of vaccine availability.
“The schemes we are using now tie us to certain combinations of the vaccines,” lamented Ilesh Jani.
Since the announcement of the first case in March last year, Mozambique has a cumulative total of 1,968 deaths due to covid-19 and 171,502 infections.
Covid-19 has caused more than 5.38 million deaths worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report by Agence France-Presse.
A new variant, Omicron, classified as worrying by the World Health Organization (WHO), was detected in southern Africa, but since the South African health authorities gave the alert on November 24, infections have been reported in at least 89 countries on all continents, including Portugal.
