Bloomberg News reports that Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine will be offered as a booster to some South African health workers, who received either one or two shots of Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J’s) inoculation as part of a vaccine trial involving almost half a million people.

Glenda Gray, the co-lead of J&J’s vaccine trials in SA and president of the SA Medical Research Council, confirmed that the Moderna shot would be offered to 10,000 health workers in a trial known as Sherpa which was likely to start in the second half of April. The aim of the study, which will target participants in the earlier Sisonke trial, is to compare how well the Moderna shot works in comparison to Pfizer’s shot as a boost. Pfizer’s inoculation is being offered as a booster by the SA government. Sherpa, which is being run by Moderna and the SAMRC, is the second vaccine trial that Moderna will undertake in SA. The Ubuntu trial stretches across eight African nations and is designed to determine the vaccine’s efficacy in people infected with HIV. SA has seen coronavirus cases plunge, but its test positivity rate has stuck stubbornly above 5%, indicating that the virus is still circulating. Another wave of infections is expected in about May, according to Gray.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Antony Sguazzin at Fin24

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