Johannesburg (AFP)

South Africa, the country most affected on the continent by the coronavirus epidemic, received its long-awaited first shipment of vaccines against Covid-19 on Monday, according to images broadcast by public television SABC.

This arrival will allow the start of a mass vaccination campaign, which will primarily target health personnel.

The authorities ultimately plan to vaccinate by the end of the year at least 67% of the population, or about 40 million people.

A delivery of 500,000 additional doses is expected during the month of February.

Injections to about 1.2 million health workers will begin within about two weeks, after the vaccine has gone through a necessary quarantine and regulatory and quality control procedures.

"The arrival of the vaccine provides great hope for the economic and social recovery of our country and, more importantly, for the health of our people," said President Ramaphosa.

It "will give the signal for a mass vaccination campaign which will be the most ambitious and the largest in the history of our country," he added.

With at least 1.45 million recorded infections and more than 44,000 deaths, South Africa has the worst record in terms of numbers of cases and deaths on the African continent.

But the country has yet to start vaccinating its population, triggering criticism over the slow supply and the lack of a strategy.

Mr Ramaphosa tried to explain the country's delay: "The unprecedented global demand for vaccine doses, coupled with the much higher purchasing power of richer countries, has forced us to conduct long and in-depth negotiations. with manufacturers, in order to obtain enough vaccines ".

The Covid-19 epidemic in South Africa, the continent's most industrialized country, has been accelerated by a new variant, suspected to be more contagious.

South African Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize announced this weekend that he had reserved 20 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19.

They are in addition to the 12 million doses of vaccines obtained from the Covax system set up by the WHO, the nine million doses of that developed by the American laboratory Johnson & Johnson and the 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca / Oxford (including the million received Monday).

Africa was relatively untouched by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, but the rise in the number of infections has recently accelerated.

As of Monday, the continent recorded 3.6 million cases and 91,000 deaths.

Only a few African countries - Seychelles, Mauritius, Morocco and Algeria, in particular - have started to vaccinate the population.

At the rate of two doses per person, Africa will need 1.5 billion doses to immunize 60% of its approximately 1.3 billion inhabitants, at an estimated cost of between 7 and 10 billion dollars.

The African Union has obtained 670 million doses for its member states, the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC, AU institution) said on Thursday.

African countries must also receive doses from the Covax system, piloted by the WHO to try to allow equitable distribution of anti-Covid vaccines.

© 2021 AFP