JOHANNESBURG – The African Union has started the distribution of 400 million Covid vaccines to member states, its chairman, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced.
The AU’s aim is to deliver 25 million vaccines a month by January. Member states agreed in March to combine their buying power and source vaccines together.
The countries opted to buy the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the final stage of production of which is done in South Africa.
“This is a momentous step forward in Africa’s efforts to safeguard the health and well-being of its people,” President Ramaphosa said.
“This will provide impetus to the fight against Covid-19 across the continent and will lay the basis for Africa’s social and economic recovery.”
Vaccination rates on the continent have lagged way behind the rest of the world. The South African president as well as other African leaders have accused wealthier countries of engaging in vaccine nationalism.
The 400 million vaccines should be enough to immunise a third of the continent’s population and bring Africa halfway towards the goal of vaccinating at least 60 percent of the people, the AU said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation called for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters through the end of September or later, citing global inequalities in the vaccine rollout.
The statement came hours after a San Francisco hospital began offering “supplemental doses” of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to Johnson & Johnson recipients – following the lead of countries like Israel, which is already offering Pfizer boosters to elderly people, and European countries, planning to start boosters next month.
About 29 percent of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, but that number is close to one percent in low-income countries, according to Our World in Data.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. – BBC/BUSINESS INSIDER.
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