- Africa’s largest-ever mass vaccination campaign is poised to start in February under COVAX.
- In order to receive the shipment from the COVAX facility, the recipient countries have to submit finalized national deployment and vaccination plans to receive vaccines.
Africa’s largest-ever mass vaccination campaign is poised to start in February under COVAX. Under the global initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi the Vaccine Alliance and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), COVAX is starting the first phase of COVID-19 vaccine delivery and has notified countries in Africa of the estimated dose allocation vide letters sent on 30 January 2021.
It plans to start shipping nearly 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to the continent in February. The final shipments will be subject to the production capacities of vaccine manufacturers and the readiness of countries. In order to receive the shipment from the COVAX facility, recipient countries have to submit finalized national deployment and vaccination plans to receive vaccines. The roll-out announcement is to allow countries to fine-tune their planning for COVID-19 immunization campaigns.
Speaking about the rollout, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa said that it will be a the critical first step to ensure the continent gets equitable access to vaccines. Dr Moeti urged African nations to beef up their national vaccine deployment plans with regulatory processes, cold chain systems and distribution plans well in place to ensure the safe delivery of vaccines from ports of entry to delivery.
The roll-out of the AstraZeneca/Oxford AZD1222 vaccine is subject to the vaccine being listed for emergency use by WHO. For the initial limited volume of Pfizer vaccine, proposals were invited to which thirteen African countries submitted proposals. These proposals were evaluated by a multi-agency committee based on current mortality rates, new cases and trends, and the capacity to handle the ultra-cold chain needs of the vaccine. Around 320 000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which has received WHO Emergency Use Listing have been allocated to four African countries -Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia. But these recipient countries should be able to store and distribute doses at minus 70 degrees Celsius.
The initial allocation is expected to immunize 3% of the vulnerable African population, such as health workers and other vulnerable groups in the first half of 2021.With more vaccines expected to be available in the market, the plan is to vaccinate at least 20% of Africans by providing up to 600 million doses by the end of 2021.
To supplement COVAX efforts, the African Union has also secured 670 million vaccine doses for the continent for distribution in 2021 and 2022. The African Export-Import Bank will facilitate payments by providing advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to US$2 billion to the manufacturers on behalf of countries.
