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(CNN) – African nations are lagging behind in sourcing COVID-19 vaccines as richer countries stockpile vaccines and prioritize their own populations, despite an increase in cases and a new variant affecting the continent.
On Monday, South Africa received its first million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, with another 500,000 expected later this month. It will begin inoculating health workers in February, the health ministry told CNN, becoming one of the first countries in Africa to receive large doses of the Covid-19 vaccines.
South Africa also ordered another 20 million vaccines through a deal with Pfizer / BioNTech and expects to buy another 9 million from Johnson & Johnson, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a local media channel on Monday.
Seychelles was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to begin vaccinating its population, using doses of China’s Sinopham vaccine, with the goal of being the first to have 70% coverage among adults, according to a press release.
The island of Mauritius also began vaccinating frontline workers on January 26, after India donated 100,000 doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines.
In December, Guinea, in West Africa, ordered 55 doses of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and gave the first doses to 25 officials, according to The Associated Press.
Immunization programs in North Africa, Morocco and Algeria also recently began, according to Our World in Data, an independent statistics website from the University of Oxford’s Global Change Data Lab.
Compared to other regions, Africa was slow to start and is likely to take time to catch up, health officials said.
Emerging markets like South Africa have also found themselves paying more than their wealthier counterparts.
Paying double
South Africa is the country most affected by Covid-19 in Africa, registering almost 1.5 million cases to date and more than 45,000 deaths. His health ministry told CNN that global competition forced him to buy the Oxford / AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII) at nearly double the price, $ 5.25 per dose, according to Reuters, which they pay. other richer countries.
“There is a global demand for the vaccine in the first quarter. We do not know of a cheaper option that is immediately available,” said Health Ministry communications chief Popo Maja.
The SII did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This price is higher than the $ 3 per dose that other African countries are reportedly willing to pay in a deal the African Union (AU) struck two weeks ago. That order promises 270 million doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca, Pfizer / BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines for African countries, again through IBS.
But few cheap vaccine options are available to African countries due to continued global demand, leaving the continent behind, say government officials and health organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO).
Making your own offers
Most African countries suffered fewer deaths from the first wave of the virus last year compared to other parts of the world, but the number of cases is now increasing across the continent, particularly in the southern region.
The African continent has registered more than 3.6 million cases, while deaths increased by 40% since January 1 to reach 92,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
South Africa is also grappling with a new variant of the virus that emerged there, which health experts say is possibly more transmissible and capable of evading the effect of vaccines. It is driving a record number of cases and has been detected in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Comoros and Zambia, as well as in more than 20 non-African countries so far.
“If we don’t handle the situation, we will end up with a moral catastrophe on our hands,” John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN last week. “If we have those vaccines and we continue to aggressively apply public health measures, the issue of variants would disappear.”
Last year, the WHO established the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a partnership to coordinate production and improve access to treatments, vaccines and tests.
COVAX, the vaccine arm of ACT Accelerator, aims to distribute 2 billion doses of Covid-19 worldwide by the end of this year, with a forecast of 690 million for low-income countries in Africa.
The initiative is led by WHO; the Coalition for Innovations in Epidemic Preparedness; and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. It will be funded by development agencies and donations from groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
If Gavi’s supply forecast is correct, countries will only have enough to fully vaccinate 27% of their combined population, James Fulker, a Gavi spokesman, told CNN.
The WHO is asking richer countries to prioritize fair supply rather than making their own lengthy deals with pharmaceutical companies or sharing their unused doses with COVAX.
At the same time, the health agency is encouraging poorer countries to obtain additional coverage through their own agreements.
The AU has also taken the initiative in seeking agreements for its member countries by creating the Task Force for the Procurement of Vaccines in Africa (AVATT).
Last week, AVATT acquired 400 million doses of IBS, adding to the 270 million insured in January, Nkengasong said.
Anger Against Vaccine Nationalism
The global disparity in access to Covid-19 vaccines has sparked widespread anger among African leaders, including South African President and AU President Cyril Ramaphosa, who warned during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum last week that the richest countries are “hoarding” vaccines. and called for global action to ensure an equitable deployment.
“We are concerned about vaccine nationalism,” Ramaphosa said. “The rich countries of the world went out and acquired large doses of vaccines from the developers and manufacturers of these vaccines and some countries have even gone further and acquired up to four times more than their population needs.”
For example, Canada and the United Kingdom have purchased enough vaccines to cover 500% and 300% of their populations respectively, according to data from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.
This behavior is marginalizing the countries that “most need” the vaccine, Ramaphosa added.
The WHO has echoed Ramaphosa’s words on several occasions, recently stating that the vaccine gap between rich and poor countries is widening.
National implementations
But sub-Saharan African countries are working as hard as they can to get some coverage going.
Ghana plans to purchase 17.6 million doses of different vaccines by June, said its president, Nana Akufo Addo, announcing new restrictions in a speech on Sunday. The West African nation of 30 million is fighting a second wave, with nearly 67,000 reported cases and a record daily total of 1,583 cases on Sunday.
In East Africa, Kenya will begin vaccinating this month and expects to vaccinate 1.25 million people by June, its health ministry reported on Friday.
Uganda, with a population of around 44 million, plans to access vaccines through COVAX and its health ministry has said it will try to obtain more from AstraZeneca. It is also exploring the possibility of obtaining vaccines from China, if WHO approves its vaccine.
In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, officials say they will start receiving doses of vaccines this month through COVAX. Health Minister Osagie Enanire is also working with the AU to secure the vaccines of his agreement.
The country has been grappling with oxygen shortages and an increasing number of cases. Nigeria will receive 16 million doses in the initial distribution of COVAX, the third most of any country in the world.
The value of sharing
Despite the progress made, African countries in general face a long wait to receive Covid-19 vaccines. For example, less than 20% of the 270 million doses first ordered by the AU will be available by June, according to a press release from the African Vaccine Procurement Task Force.
COVAX predicts that by then it will have delivered 640 million doses, of which about 30% are for AU countries, Fulker said.
In contrast, the European Union expects member states to vaccinate 70% of their adult populations by the summer.
“It is in their common interest, in the collective interest that people get vaccinated in a timely manner everywhere so that we can come out of this pandemic as a collective,” Nkengasong told CNN. “There is no way that only parts of the world like the richest nations will come out of this without the southern hemisphere also coming out of the pandemic.”
In his opening remarks at the 148th session of the WHO executive board on January 18, its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyses, said that the approach of first world countries was “counterproductive”.
“Until we end the Covid-19 pandemic everywhere, we will not end it anywhere. As we speak, rich countries are launching vaccines, while the world’s least developed countries watch and wait,” he added at a conference of press on January 25.
Ghebreyses wants vaccination to be up and running in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021, but this may be an ambitious goal when many countries in Africa have yet to receive vaccines and may not for a few weeks.
“Time is short and the stakes cannot be higher; every moment counts,” he said.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Western countries have ‘hoarded’ Covid vaccines. Africa is lagging behind as cases rise.”
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