[ad_1]
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has secured nine million doses of COVID-19 vaccines through April and hopes to vaccinate at least a fifth of its 110 million people by the end of the year, said Tuesday the Minister of Health.
“So far, until April, we have received almost nine million doses,” said Lia Tadesse.
“In this year, we want to make sure we have at least 20% of the population,” she told Reuters.
Ethiopia was open to possible vaccine donations, Lia added, and said the country does not independently purchase doses, but only through the COVAX facility.
COVAX is co-led by the GAVI alliance which secures vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
African countries are trying to secure COVID-19 vaccine supplies for their 1.3 billion people, even as wealthy countries elsewhere in the world race forward with mass vaccination campaigns. Only a handful of countries on the continent have started administering vaccines.
On Tuesday, Lia did not specify which vaccines Ethiopia would receive through COVAX.
“We don’t get any specific vaccines, we get them depending on the availability of the COVAX facility,” she told Reuters.
The health ministry said on Tuesday that the country would need 13 billion Ethiopian birr ($ 328 million) for vaccines and related expenses, said the Ethiopian news agency, which will be covered by the government and the international donations.
More than 142,000 Ethiopians have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 2,100 have died of the disease, according to WHO data.
Earlier this month, COVAX said it had allocated at least 330 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the poorest countries and will aim to deliver them and millions more in the first half of 2021.
This includes 240 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India, 96 million additional doses of the same vaccine made by AstraZeneca, plus 1.2 million doses of Pfizer -BioNTech’S COVID-19 vaccine.
Lai told Reuters that Ethiopia was waiting for more information, fearing that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine might not be as effective in significantly reducing the risk of mild or moderate COVID-19 from the 501Y.V2 variant.
“There are concerns that the AstraZeneca is not working. It is not stated that it is not working,” she said. “Based on the information we have, the relevant authorities within the COVAX facility, research institutes and WHO are currently under investigation, so we will wait for that.”
($ 1 = 39.58 birr)
(Reporting from the Nairobi press room; written by Omar Mohammed, edited by Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)
[ad_2]
Source link