GENEVA, Feb 8 (Reuters) – South Africa will roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine in a “stepped manner” to assess its effectiveness in preventing severe illness, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, the co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, said on Monday.

Karim said South Africa would pause the rollout while determining how to roll it out, and could vaccinate 100,000 people with the shot to see how well it worked on preventing hospitalisations and deaths. (Reporting by John Revill, Stephanie Nebehay, Emma Farge and Peter Graff; Editing by Alison Williams)

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