Africa ramps up its rollouts of the vaccine.
Vaccination programmes are underway across Africa, bolstered by the international Covid‐19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) initiative to help poorer countries access supplies. More than half of the countries on the continent have now received vaccines, and a growing number have started administering them. But African countries are still significantly behind other parts of the world. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the crisis cannot end unless everyone can inoculate their populations.
Deliveries of vaccine supplies under the Covax programme started in February, and most countries in Africa have signed up. The programme – backed by the WHO and other multilateral bodies – aims to distribute an initial half million doses of the Oxford‐AstraZeneca vaccine worldwide, with the aim of supplying 2bn vaccines by the end of 2021. Of this total, the WHO says 600m doses will be for Africa, enough to vaccinate at least 20% of the population. However, there are a handful of African countries not taking part in Covax for various reasons. Tanzania and Madagascar have said they have no plans to acquire vaccines, and Burundi says that at the moment, they don't need vaccines.
There are still critical hurdles for the scheme's rollout in vast African countries with sketchy infrastructure and an array of security challenges – a point addressed by Faisal Shuaib, director of Nigeria's primary healthcare agency. “States without a functional airport will have their vaccines transported by road using vans with fitted cold cabins, from the nearest airport,” he said.
Nigeria received almost 4m jabs on March 2nd, Angola received more than 600,000 doses. The almost 4m AstraZeneca/Oxford doses received by Nigeria, made by the Serum Institute of India, are the first of 16m shots that Covax plans to deliver over the coming months to the country of 200m. The government said it hoped to vaccinate at least 70% of its adult population over the next two years and health officials said more than 2m people had already registered for the jab online.
Ghana and Còte d'Ivoire were the first African countries to receive vaccines from Covax. Ivorian Health Minister Eugene Aka Ouele said the first batch of 504,000 vaccines would be distributed in the Abidjan area, “the epicentre of the country's epidemic.” Members of the armed forces and security services would be the first to get their immunisation.
Kenya received its first shipment of just over 1m Covax‐funded AstraZeneca/Oxford shots on March 3rd.
More than 1.7m doses of vaccines have arrived in the DR Congo's capital Kinshasa, shipped to the country through Covax as part of a first wave of supplies that will continue over the next few weeks. A plan for the deployment of the vaccines across the country is being finalised. The initial aim is to vaccinate 20% of the population, including health workers (who represent 1% of the population), people aged over 55 (6% of the population) and people suffering from serious health conditions such as kidney disease, high blood pressure or diabetes (13% of the population). UNICEF is helping with the logisitics of delivering the vaccines including the transport of injection materials and protection materials. The agency will also ensure the quality and security of the cold chain and vaccine storage. The first phase of vaccine introduction will target the four provinces of the DRC most affected by the pandemic: Kinshasa, North Kivu, Central Kongo and Haut‐Katanga.
In Ethiopia frontline health workers were vaccinated at the official launch of its campaign. Ethiopia received 2.2m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine under Covax on March 7th. The country is experiencing a surge in the number of new Covid‐19 infections and on March 12th recorded 172,571 cases, including 2,510 deaths.
Liberia received 96,000 vaccines via Covax on March 5th as part of the 384,000 doses that are expected to be delivered to the country through the facility.
Some nations have sourced vaccines from outside the Covax scheme through direct purchases from the manufacturers, or as donations from countries such as China, Russia, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Outside the Covax initiative, African countries that have launched vaccination drives include Senegal, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. China has donated doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to Zimbabwe, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Tunisia,Sierra Leone and Guinea. Tunisia said its vaccination campaign would start on March 13th. Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi on March 10th thanked China for the support it had provided to his country in the fight against the pandemic. Tunisia was also due to receive doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.
The UAE has donated Sinopharm doses to the Seychelles. India has donated the AstraZeneca vaccine to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Mozambique,eSwatini,Botswana, Mauritius and Seychelles. Senegal donated some of the vaccine doses it bought from China to Gambia and Guinea‐Bissau as “a form of African solidarity,” according to its president, Macky Sall. Russia donated some doses of the Sputnik‐V vaccine which were used on an experimental basis in Guinea.
Libya missed a deadline by which it was required to provide the necessary documentation to receive the first batch of Covax vaccines, the WHO said in a statement at the beginning of March. The Tripoli‐based authorities had authorised the procurement of vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. Libya expects to receive 300,000 doses of Covid‐19 vaccines “in the coming days”, the chairman of the Supreme Committee to Combat the Coronavirus Pandemic, Khalifa al‐Bakhoush, said on March 9th. 218 TV and a number of other privately owned outlets focused on Libyan news quoted interim prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah as saying that “all without exception” would get a vaccine in Libya.
Mauritania will receive its first doses of vaccines by the end of March, health minister, Nezhirou Ould Hamed announced. The country has opted for the Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccines, and is currently in talks to also acquire Russia's Sputnik V jab. The minister said that the country's choice of vaccines was determined by their affordability. China has granted Mauritania 50,000 doses of the Sinopharm jab as aid. The minister explained that the country's share of vaccines provided through Covax had been delayed because Mauritania was not a priority country due to the relatively small number of Covid‐19 deaths it had recorded.
Mauritius will soon receive more vaccines from India (330,000 doses of its vaccine) and China (100,000 doses) for the vaccination campaign, which would resume on March 15th. Mauritius went into a new lockdown on March 9th to contain the spread of Covid‐19 on the island. Only essential services remained open.
Morocco has vaccinated more than 4m people so far, according to health authorities on March 12th. A total of 1,224,959 people have been given two shots of the vaccine. Morocco has been using the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines in its vaccination campaign and has ordered 1m doses of Sputnik V. Morocco World News said the country was expecting to receive a total of 20m doses over the next six weeks, according to health officials.
Somalia has received the first batch of 300,000 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines. It was delivered by the WHO and Somalia expects to receive 1.2m doses. Inoculations were due to begin on March 16th with health workers first in line. Health minister, Fowsia Abikar has said her country faces a “dire” Covid‐19 situation and called for a second lockdown to combat the pandemic. However, she said she was confident that with the roll‐out of vaccines the country would be able to manage the second wave.
South Africa, the worst affected country on the continent, delayed an initial vaccination plan using the AstraZeneca vaccine due to concerns about its efficacy against a new variant of coronavirus. It started vaccinating on February 17th after receiving 80,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is administered as a single dose and has been shown to be effective against the variant. The country later received another consignment of this vaccine in late February and so far has immunised more than 100,000 healthcare workers. Pfizer has also committed to supply 20m vaccine doses, with deliveries expected by the end of March.
South Africa has offered the one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it ordered from the Indian supplier to the African Union (AU), to distribute to other countries which might be interested in using it.
The Ugandan government was expected to roll out the vaccination campaign on March 10th, starting with health workers at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in the capital, Kampala, and the Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital in the central region. The government will be using national identification cards, driving licences, passports and refugee cards to register people who will be receiving the jabs.
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) has expressed concern about the slow pace of the country's Covid‐19 vaccination programme. Some 35,000 people have been vaccinated in three weeks – an average of 24 people being vaccinated per day in each province,” an official was quoted as saying. He added that the uptake was extremely low and worrying.
John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says the vaccines provided “will not get the pandemic out” of the continent. He says African countries will eventually need to vaccinate at least 60% of their populations, with his target for 2021 being 35%. There is also an AU plan to pool supply arrangements on behalf of all 55 countries in the continent. Africa's leading mobile network provider, MTN, has made a donation of $25m (£17.8m) to this plan to secure about 7m doses of the Covid‐19 vaccine for the continent's health workers.
As of March 13th, in the continent of 1.3bn people there had been 4,017,815 confirmed cases of Covid‐19 and 107,268 confirmed deaths. (© AFP 1,3/3 2021; unicef.org; Daily Monitor 10/3; Frontpage Africa 7/3; BBC Monitoring 5‐14/4; BBC News online 11/3;Goobjoog 1/3;Radio Mogadishu 15/3)
Spike Jeopardises Growth
Africa's economic recovery could be jeopardised by a resurgence of Covid‐19 infections in 2021 according to the latest Economic Update released by the African Development Bank (AfDB) on March 12th. In its latest forecast, AfDB projects real GDP in Africa to grow by 3.4% in 2021, after contracting by 2.1% in 2020. Recovery will be underpinned by a resumption of tourism, a rebound in commodity prices and a rollback of pandemic‐induced restrictions.
However, uncertainty surrounding this positive growth outlook for Africa is high. The continent's prospects largely depend on its access and ability to effectively deploy therapeutics and vaccines in the coming months.
“We are looking at growing back with greater economic resilience and making sure that growth is inclusive of young people and women,” said AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina. However, he underscored the need for the continent to secure more vaccine doses for at least 60% of its population.
“The issue of vaccine justice is important …we must develop our pharmaceutical capacity…” he said, adding that the bank will be helping the continent to upgrade its pharmaceutical capacity. Failure to access and deploy vaccines, Dr Adesina argued, would complicate economic recovery on the continent as countries would face barriers and restrictions on travel.
The report also shows that the pandemic has caused a surge in government financing needs in Africa. AfDB estimates that African governments needed additional gross financing of about $154bn in 2020 to respond to the crisis. (The EastAfrican 15/3) Covid vaccination rollout p.23290A; South African vaccine campaign derails p.23283A