Paris (AFP)
France said Wednesday that it intended to give African countries around 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines in April, as part of the Covax system, and expects to deliver 500,000 to them in all by mid-June.
By offering these doses, bottled in Italy, France will thus inaugurate the European mechanism for sharing doses with Covax, said the French presidency.
The agreements with Covax concern initially AstraZeneca vaccines but this sharing mechanism should ultimately cover the entire basket of vaccines available to Europe, according to Paris.
The Covax program is currently hampered by the decision of India, which was to produce doses for Covax, to block its vaccine exports for the moment, France recalled.
Last week, the international Covax program launched a campaign to raise an additional $ 2 billion to be able to reserve doses of anti-Covid vaccines.
Covax enables the 92 poorest countries to obtain doses of vaccines, thanks to funds raised by donors.
It is co-led by WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.
The goal of the program is to distribute enough doses to immunize up to 27% of the population in the 92 poorest countries by the end of the year.
The Covax system has already delivered more than 38 million doses to 113 countries.
© 2021 AFP