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· World Health Organization’s (WHO) CEO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that so far just over 25 million coronavirus vaccines or 1.5% of doses administered worldwide have been in Africa
· He was speaking recently at a meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union on vaccine access to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic
· COVID-19 vaccine shipments to African countries have slowed down in May due to the devastating surge of cases India is facing
World Health Organization’s (WHO) CEO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that so far just over 25 million coronavirus vaccines or 1.5% of doses administered worldwide have been in Africa. He was speaking recently at a meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union on vaccine access to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.
He further said that he had called on the member States to support a massive push to vaccinate at least 10% of the population of every country by September. The target set for December this year is to achieve at least 30% by the end of the year.
COVID-19 vaccine shipments to African countries have slowed down in May due to the devastating surge of cases India is facing. There was heavy reliance on India to supply vaccines globally since it has the manufacturing facilities. The African continent was expecting 66 million COVID-19 vaccine doses through the COVAX facility from February to May. However, it has so far received only 18.2 million doses.
The report card of Africa on Covid-19 is not worrisome. The continent has more than 4.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases — with 4.2 million recoveries and 126,000 deaths. The WHO is working to bring immediate solutions for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. It has also revealed that there has been some progress in the past two weeks with a good number of countries committing to share and equitable distribution of vaccines. However, he cautioned that there were still traces of vaccine nationalism evidenced in many countries, which have manufacturing bases.
