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France will provide the African continent with 10 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines over the next three months following a new partnership between France and the African Union.
The vaccines will be allocated and distributed under the AU’s African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) and the partnership for equitable vaccine deployment known as Covax, according to a statement released Monday by the Elysee.
“The (Covid-19) pandemic can only be overcome through intense cooperation,” Macron said in the statement, stressing France’s “solid partnership” with the AU.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – who along with Macron has strongly attacked unequal access to vaccines – hailed the announcement as “a strong and welcome gesture of human solidarity and political cooperation at a time when the world has it most. need”.
Speaking after the G20 Compact with Africa conference in Berlin on Friday, Ramaphosa said Africa was “unfairly disadvantaged” in the race for access to vaccines.
In March of this year, South Africa sold one million AstraZeneca vaccines to other AU countries, claiming they were in excess of need.
However, trials had also shown that the AZ vaccine was less effective in protecting against the South African variant dominant in the country at the time.
Enough for 400 million people
AVAT is a means of enabling pooled procurement of vaccines by AU members to help them meet at least 50 percent of their needs. Covax aims to help countries close the gap through donations.
The statement from Macron’s office said enough vaccines had been purchased through AVAT to allow vaccination of 400 million people in Africa – one-third of the continent’s population – by September 2022, at a cost of three. billions of dollars.
In August, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a moratorium on the administration of third doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines until at least the end of September, in order to allow at least 10% of the population of each country get vaccinated. .
So far, low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses per 100 people, due to lack of supply.
300,000 for the Congo
WHO said Monday that the Republic of Congo has received more than 300,000 doses of vaccine from the United States, its first under Covax.
The donation amounts to 302,400 injections of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the agency’s African branch said on Twitter.
Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, began vaccinations in April using the Chinese formula Sinopharm and the Russian Sputnik.
But uptake of these vaccines has been very low, and vaccine reluctance is widespread. By mid-August, less than two percent of Congo’s eligible population had been vaccinated.
On August 15, President Denis Sassou Nguesso appealed to the public to be vaccinated, saying herd immunity was “the only way to safety” in the fight against the pandemic.
(with AFP)
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