The AU has secured 670 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines for the continent.
This was revealed by Africa Centres for Disease (CDC) director Dr John Nkengasong on Thursday at his weekly pandemic briefing.
Nearly 3,5 million infections and 87,937 deaths were reported in Africa by then, out of almost 100 million infections and two million deaths worldwide.
Egypt, Morocco and the Seychelles are the first African countries to begin giving people Covid-19 vaccines, mostly using the Sinopharm candidate developed in China, while Guinea has given about 50 shots to people, he said.
Of the doses on the way to Africa, the Serum Institute of India (SII) will provide 400 million AstraZeneca vaccines.
SA’s first million, arriving on Tuesday, are also the AstraZeneca candidate, manufactured by the SII.
Seven million doses will be provided to health-care workers in the coming months, funded by a $25m donation by MTN mobile network, announced on Wednesday.
The continent has about three million health workers, according to the Africa CDC.
AU chairperson President Cyril Ramaphosa said earlier this month that it had provisionally secured 270 million doses — from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca — for member states through its Covid-19 African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (Avatt).
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) provided manufacturers with advance procurement commitment guarantees of $2bn (about R30bn) to secure the deal and member states are now able to place orders on the African Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP).
Meanwhile, African countries are scrambling for medical oxygen as the death rate in some countries reaches record highs during this more aggressive and severe second wave of infections.
An extra 700 oxygen concentrators and accessories, 140 pulse oximeters and 55 hand-held ultrasonic oxygen analysers were procured in the past week by the Africa CDC, to be distributed to member states.
“Now, on the continent, everybody knows at least one person who has died of Covid, if not more,” said Nkengasong, who lost two close colleagues during the past week.
Among the 21 countries reporting high case fatality rates — above the global average of 2,2% — in the past week are two of SA’s neighbours.
Zimbabwe (3,5%) and Eswatini (3,5%) are among the top 10 countries above the global average death rate, while SA’s average death rate is 3%.
Even though SA’s second wave of infections has started to drop, new cases and deaths are rising in other parts of the continent.
The Africa CDC is reporting more than 32,000 new infections a day, more than double the number at the peak of the first wave last year.
The virus doesn’t know who is a foreigner and who is a national.
However, on average over the past month, new cases in Africa’s most populous countries have been decreasing: in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (6%), Kenya (5%), Ethiopia (4%) and Egypt (4%).
Overall, new infections in SA went up 1% on average and Nigeria had a 20% average increase over the past four weeks, ending January 24.
Nigeria had a 33% average increase in deaths, the DRC was up 26%, SA 18% and Egypt 3% in that time, while the death toll, on average, dropped in the other populous countries.
“SA is one of five countries making up 70% of coronavirus infections on the continent, along with Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia in descending order of infections,” said Nkengasong.
On average, by region, there has been a:
- 21% increase in the Western region
- 16% increase in the Central region
- 7% increase in the Southern Region
- 9% decrease in the Eastern region
- 4% decrease in the Northern region
Nkengasong said vaccination programmes were urgently needed to control the pandemic and encouraged African member states to prepare themselves and secure vaccines on the AMSP, which opened for pre-orders last week.
He said: “On the African Medical Supplies Platform you can see various allocations of vaccines that have been assigned to countries and a deadline to countries to express their interest so we can start engaging with Afreximbank to move this process forward.”
Encouraging continental solidarity when it comes to securing and delivering vaccinations, the Africa CDC chief said: “There cannot be discrimination of people living within a national boundary. There must be equitable access for everyone ... we cannot discriminate. The virus doesn’t know who is a foreigner and who is a national.
“The only way we can prevent our own people from dying, our loved ones from dying, is to vaccinate ourselves. We are all vulnerable and susceptible, and the only way to protect (ourselves) is to get a vaccine.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.