South Africa plans to build local coronavirus vaccine manufacturing plant

South Africa's minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Blade Nzimande has said that the government is planning to build a local coronavirus vaccine manufacturing plant, according to a news report by Business Tech.

Speaking in a virtual conference on July 31, Nzimande said that the plant would be headed up by both government officials, pharmaceutical companies, and private-sector vaccine specialists.

"The aim is to get South Africa into a state of readiness to manufacture an approved COVID-19 vaccine locally.

"In anticipation of the huge demand, should a candidate vaccine be identified, manufacturing facilities will need to be established in different regions. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African continent region as a whole will need to be ready."

Nzimande indicated that his department is also working on a number of other projects including:

• The development and production of local ventilators
• The mass production of hand sanitizer
• The mass production of 3d-printed face shields

South Africa is also one of the participants in an experimental COVID-19 vaccine trial being conducted between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

AstraZeneca is also well on its way to administering shots to 5,000 volunteers in a late-stage trial in Brazil and may scale up the size of its studies there, chief executive officer Pascal Soriot said Thursday in an interview.

Subjects are being enrolled in South Africa, and a test in the US is about to begin, he said.

The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is among the leaders in the race to develop an immunization against the coronavirus pandemic that’s killed almost 670,000 people worldwide.