In early 2020, a South African company, Conoché Bio-Tech approached the Medical Research Council MRC about a product - a castor oil extract - that could be used as a treatment for COVID-19. This was around the time the government had set aside money for this very purpose

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The MRC referred Conoché to the Department of Science & Technology (DSI) as they felt there was real potential with the product, which is based on a patented biopharmaceutical drug with antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antihistamine, and analgesic properties

Conoché's product is a biopharmaceutical, i.e it has an active substance derived from or extracted from materials of biological origin (living cells or tissue), in this case, castor oil - a vegetable oil. Most serums and vaccines are made in a similar way

Conoché's reason to meet up with DSI officials was so that they could collaborate on generating in vivo data (living organism studies) and conduct pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies which would eventually end in clinical studies

However, the DSI told Conoché at the time (early April 2020) that they were "heavily involved in the government response" and that there was "a long list of VACCINE manufacturing projects" that they were looking into. This was a moot point since this drug is NOT a vaccine

Interestingly, one of the companies that were researching COVID-19 treatments in South Africa was Shin Poong Pharmaceutical, a South Korean company that started a study in South Africa at around the same time Conoché's approached the MRC and DSI

This is likely what the DSI was referring to in April when they told Conoché that they were attending to what they called "sequencing, surveillance and diagnostic projects" requiring government intervention. Seems the SAn government was occupied with assisting foreign entities

As regards the product being developed by Conoché, the DSI raised two issues:

1. Their department required full clinical trial evidence that it worked, was safe, and "complied with current good manufacturing practice" before it could be taken to SAHPRA. And...

2. The DSI referred to the product - which by definition and composition is a biopharmaceutical castor oil extract - as a "complementary medicine", and basically asserted that there's no evidence such remedies (non-pharmaceuticals) have any effect on the SARS-CoV-2 virus

As noted above, Conoché's castor oil extract drug is a biopharmaceutical, which makes the DSI's response of categorising it as a non-pharmaceutical inaccurate and untrue

In fact, a DSI director (who serves on the Health Minister’s Advisory Committee) told representatives of the startup biopharm company that it was highly unlikely that they could have any drug that fits their criteria

Lastly, the DSI concluded by re-emphasising to Conoché that the product needed to be sent for lab tests for clinical data as "no remedy can be officially administered to humans" without the approval of SAHPRA...

Therefore, the next step was to find an appropriately certified lab where laboratory test data could be generated. However, the MRC said there was no lab test equipment (SARS-CoV-2 assay) to do the tests and Conoché would have to wait until capacity was available

Finally, the product was tested with the CSIR in October 2020. The conclusion of the CSIR in relation to the oil extract was as follows:

Basically, the CSIR said the product was effective against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and that it should move swiftly to animal and human trials!

However, as Conoché would find out, they hit a brick wall. The government insisted that vaccination is their preferred approach to COVID

Essentially, the South African government is looking to vaccines as the only way to combat COVID-19, yet as the chair of the ministerial advisor committee, Dr. Salim Karim Abdool Karim said a few days ago: "South Africa SHOULD have joined the vaccine race"...

So it does seem as if from the start the South African government never intended to find a medical solution for COVID-19, instead, the plan was always to make SA a conduit for foreign States and companies to channel their drugs to SAns, instead of SAns doing it themselves