WHO aims to complete 30% of Africa’s COVID jabs by February Coronavirus pandemic news

WHO and its partners hope to provide about 30% of the vaccine to Africa by February.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners stated that they hope to provide Africa with about 30% of the COVID-19 vaccine required by the continent by February, and have seriously failed to achieve the 60% vaccine that African leaders had hoped to achieve this year Vaccination coverage target.

To date, only 2% of the 5.7 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines vaccinated around the world are in Africa.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the huge difference in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries a “solvable problem” on Tuesday, and urged pharmaceutical companies to give priority to the UN-supported COVAX initiative, which aims to share vaccines globally. Provide vaccination. There is no cost to low-income countries.

The African Union accuses manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines of depriving African countries of a fair opportunity to purchase them, and urges manufacturing countries—especially India—to lift export restrictions on vaccines and their ingredients.

“These manufacturers are very aware that they never gave us proper access,” Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union’s special envoy for COVID-19, said at a WHO briefing in Geneva. “We can handle this problem completely differently.”

But companies that produce vaccines—including Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna—show no signs of their eagerness to change current strategies, which involve calling on rich countries and their regulators to authorize enhanced injections.

On June 25, 2021, Pretoria, South Africa, a person holding a placard in support of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) march to demand the introduction of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine [File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]

Masiyiwa emphasized that in order to vaccinate 60% of its population, the African Union and its partners are expected to purchase half of the required doses, and half are expected to be donated through the COVAX program, supported by WHO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

“We want to buy,” he said.

GAVI CEO Seth Berkley said that at the beginning of the outbreak, his organization had been counting on supplies from India-the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing center-but since India imposed export restrictions in March Since then, no dose has been obtained from India.

Masiyiwa added: “Suppliers have made it clear in the past eight to nine months that the biggest challenge they face is export restrictions.”

‘Vaccine sharing is good’

He urged the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to start establishing a standby pandemic preparedness fund to help poorer countries purchase vaccines in the future without having to rely on shared facilities like COVAX-so far, the fund has only managed to provide 260 million dose.

“Vaccine sharing is good-but we should not rely on vaccine sharing, especially when we can sit down and discuss and say we want to buy too,” he said.

He reiterated the requirement for vaccine patent exemption, saying that Africa hopes to build its own manufacturing capacity.

These manufacturers know very well that they have never given us proper access”, Strive Masiyiwa said [File: Rodger Bosch/AFP]

Tan Desai last week called for a “suspend” the use of boosters in healthy people until the end of the year. Countries including Israel, France and Germany have already begun to distribute the third dose of vaccine to certain groups.

In the United States, the FDA will openly debate the topic of boosters this week. In a commentary on Monday, two senior FDA officials and a senior WHO scientist wrote on The Lancet, Most people don’t need booster injections.

So far, less than 4% of Africans have been fully immunized, and most of the vaccines vaccinated around the world have been administered in only 10 wealthy countries.

This year, COVAX is nearly 30% less than the previously set target of 2 billion shots. GAVI and WHO attribute the shortage to a number of factors, including export restrictions by the Serum Institute of India (SII).