Nearly 14 million people in Africa have received Covid-19 vaccinations and 34.6 million doses have been delivered to member states, said Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) director John Nkengasong.
The front-runners in providing vaccinations so far are Morocco, which has reached 8,6 million people, Nigeria, at nearly one million people, and Ghana, which has administered 680,000 inoculations. SA stands at 290,000 vaccinations, Nkengasong said on Thursday at his weekly pandemic update.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organisation (WHO) regional director for Africa, said recently: “Less than 2% of the (832 million on Thursday) Covid-19 vaccine doses administered to date globally have been in Africa,” where most countries got their first doses only early in March.
“The pace of the vaccine rollout is, however, not uniform, with 93% of the doses given in 10 countries ... which have used at least 65% of their supplies,” she said.
Many African countries have barely moved beyond the starting line because of limited stocks and supply bottlenecks, Moeti said.
More than 4.3 million people in Africa have been infected by Covid-19 — new cases are rising in east and north Africa — and 116,506 people have died.
The Africa CDC is helping to secure vaccines from two main sources, unrelated to country bilateral agreements:
- the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), which, to date, has donated AstraZeneca (AZ) Covid-19 vaccines, sponsored by MTN, to 12 countries; and
- the global vaccine sharing platform, Covax, which has delivered affordable AZ vaccines to 32 countries to date.
Nkengasong said AVATT has signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to acquire 200 million doses of its single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, to be delivered early in the third quarter, likely July, with the option to acquire another 180 million doses.
The 400 million single-shot vaccines, at $10 (about R142) a shot, will go a long way to meeting the AU’s target of vaccinating 750 million people within two years.
Covax has promised countries another 750 million doses of the AZ vaccine (enough for 375 million people), which would be enough supply to meet the continental target in the “best case scenario”.
Nkengasong did not openly condemn Malawi’s plans to destroy 16,000 AZ vaccine doses donated by AVATT — the unused share of the 102,000 doses from India’s Serum Institute, via SA — but he noted that the April 30 “expiry date” should be June or July, according to updated analysis by the institute.
Countries need to vaccinate at scale, with speed, he urged. “We are in an emergency, a pandemic crisis. If we deliver vaccines free of charge to countries, it is with the expectation that they will get organised and vaccinate quickly ...
“Togo used up its vaccines almost immediately, as well as Ghana and other states. You do your part; we do our part.”
Overall, new infections of Covid-19 in Africa increased by 2% in the past month, picking up most in north and east Africa, where they rose by 11% and 10% respectively.
The most populous countries with rising numbers include Ethiopia and Kenya in the eastern region, at 16% and 11% respectively, and Egypt, at 6%.
Many African countries have barely moved beyond the starting line.
At the briefing, Nkengasong announced that 70 countries and more than 40,000 participants had attended a two-day conference this week on Africa’s Vaccine Manufacturing for Health Security.
Chairperson of the AU Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat convened the conference attended by nearly 90 speakers, from heads of state to experts.
Besides SA producing the J&J vaccine at Gqeberha, Algeria is working with Russia to start producing the Sputnik V vaccine, he said.
The African Vaccine Manufacturing Partnership, for tech and knowledge transfer and regulatory support, was launched at the meeting and a road map will soon be released on how to take vaccine manufacturing forward.
A target was set to reduce vaccine imports to Africa from 90% to 40% in the next 10 years.
Nkengasong said: “mRNA vaccines offer tremendous ability to leapfrog ahead and I’m very pleased that all the senior representatives of the companies producing mRNA vaccines were on the platform.
“This is all very, very good news in the right direction,” he said of the partnerships forged around vaccine manufacturing.
