African countries are dependent on Covax for covid-19 vaccines

African countries, heavily reliant on receiving covid-19 vaccines from Covax have been left scrambling as the program underdelivers. Covax was initially set to deliver 700 million covid-19 doses to the continent this year, but it lowered the figure to 520 million and it more recently said it would miss this last target because of a shortage of 100 million doses.

“This result shows some sign of progress, yet there’s still a long way to go,” Mihigo said about African countries reaching the 10% goal.

Covax’s distribution methodology is also under scrutiny, as it has some rich countries that already have many vaccine doses being eligible for doses at the same time as poorer countries that have no doses.

Other vaccine sources for African countries are bilateral agreements and the Africa Centres for Disease Control’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, which procures vaccines for all African Union member states.

Some African countries such as South Africa and Egypt are involved in the manufacturing process for covid-19 vaccines.

Africa has so far received more than 200 million vaccine doses and administered about 71% of these, Mihigo said. The continent has recorded 8 million covid-19 cases and 200,000 deaths from the disease.

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