Covax wants to turn to other vaccines to be able to deliver to the African continent
Vaccines from the Covax device when delivered to Mogadishu airport in Somalia on March 15, 2021 (illustrative image).
AP - Farah Abdi Warsameh
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The third wave of Covid-19 in Africa has not yet reached its peak of infection, but already, this wave is worse than the previous one according to the WHO, which is concerned about the spread of the Delta variant.
The Covax device supposed to distribute vaccines to poor countries is however at a standstill.
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Nearly 251,000 new cases were detected last week in Africa, 20% more than the previous week. At the same time, the continent still faces a shortage of vaccines.
The Covax device
, piloted by the WHO, supposed to distribute doses to poor countries is a failure, only 25 million doses have been distributed in Africa for 1.3 billion inhabitants and less than 2% of the African population is totally vaccinated against 25% worldwide.
In May and June, deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine, made in India, were at a standstill. However, it is mainly on this vaccine that the Covax system has relied since the start of the pandemic to distribute them in Africa. "
The current delivery times are due to the serious epidemic situation in India and to the fact that the doses produced by the Serum Institute of India were diverted to be used locally when they were intended for the Covax system,"
explains Aurélia Nguyen, the CEO of Covax.
We are in talks with the government and the Serum Institute and we expect deliveries to resume at the end of the year
”.
This shortage
has prompted the WHO and Covax to change their strategy by diversifying to turn to other vaccines. “
We now have a choice of nine vaccines or vaccine candidates. If a manufacturer cannot deliver to us, we can compensate with one of these new manufacturers
, details Aurélia Nguyen.
This gives us confidence in our ability to predict and deliver 520 million doses of vaccine by the end of the year
”.
Pending the start of deliveries from September, Covax is counting on donations of vaccines from rich countries and calls for accelerating communication campaigns in favor of vaccination.
With the lack of doses, mistrust remains the other big obstacle to vaccination on the continent.
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Coronavirus
Health and medicine
Africa
Vaccines
WHO