Vaccine deployment in Africa lags as number of Covid-19 deaths rises

As rich countries corner supplies of Covid-19 vaccines, Africa lags behind the global effort to immunize people against the disease even as its death toll rises.

Although Africa has 17 for hundred of the world’s population, it represents only 0.2% of the 209 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines administered to people around the world. Meanwhile, the continent is seeing a sharp rise in Covid infections and deaths.

As of February 22, some 2.66 million doses had been given to people living in at least seven of Africa’s 55 countries, according to Bloomberg data analyzed by Joy news.

By comparison, the United States had administered 64.28 million doses as of the same date and the United Kingdom had administered 18.34 million. Israel administered 7.4 million doses, China 40.5 million doses and Russia 2.2 million doses, according to the Bloomberg tracker.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also president of the African Union, recently called on rich countries to make more Covid-19 vaccines available to the rest of the world.

He criticized them for accumulating vaccines.

“The rich countries of the world have come out and acquired large doses. Some have even acquired up to four times what their population needs… to the exclusion of other countries ”, Ramaphosa observed during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The European Union has ordered 525 million additional complete vaccinations which will be needed to immunize its entire population, said Robin Cohen, professor of development studies at the University of Oxford, after analyzing data from the Duke Health Innovation Center.

The UK has ordered 65 million surplus complete vaccines, while Canada has ordered 156 million surplus complete vaccines. Other wealthy countries have also ordered doses far above what they needed.

The African Union recently announced that it has obtained 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for the continent as part of COVAX, an initiative of the World Health Organization, bringing the total number of COVID-19 doses safe for Africa to 1.27 billion doses.

However, it could be years before all of these doses become available and at least 1.5 billion doses will be needed to immunize only 60 percent of the continent’s population.

Increase in deaths from COVID-19 in Africa

Africa has largely avoided the terrible initial predictions that its weak health infrastructure will lead to millions of deaths from COVID. The continent only accounts for about 4% of the 2.48 million deaths from COVID worldwide. However, the number of deaths has skyrocketed in recent months.

Data from African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in the nine months between February 2020, when the first case was recorded on the continent, and November 2020, Africa recorded 2.057 million cases with 49,412 deaths.

But over the next three months, the total number of cases reached 3.8 million. The death toll has more than doubled to a total of 100,707. In other words, Africa has recorded as many deaths from COVID-19 in the past three months as in the first nine months of the pandemic.

Dr Yaw Bediako, who leads advancement at the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, wants to see a more aggressive COVID-19 vaccine deployed to protect the population.

“All the evidence suggests that this vaccine does not last a lifetime… This is why countries vaccinate thousands of people a day. Because if you do it fast and hard, you are breaking the back of the pandemic.

“If we waste it, we waste money. So we cannot stress more that it has to be difficult, fast and very, very effective ”. he told a Joy News roundtable on the deployment of the COVID vaccine.

Progress of COVID-19 vaccine in Africa

In Morocco, 2.57 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines produced in China were administered to 7.2% of the country’s population. Second doses will be needed but only 0.1% of the population has received them.

The country’s leader, King Mohammed IV, was the first person to receive the blow at the end of February. AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccines are also administered in Morocco.

In the East African Seychelles Islands, which depend mainly on tourism to maintain their economy, 65,567 doses of Sinopharm and AstraZaneca / Oxford vaccines have been administered.

Almost 46% of the population received their first dose, of which 22.5% received the second dose.

In Egypt, only 1315 doses of Sinopharm vaccines were administered without any second dose.

Vaccinations have started in Zimbabwe, with Vice President Constantino Chiwenga taking the first injection of the Sinopharm vaccine on February 19. “My ministry has carried out all the scientific processes to verify the effectiveness of the Sinopharm vaccine, which has been confirmed at 79%” he said receiving his jab.

“My presence here today with some officials from the Ministry of Health (is) to show the government’s confidence in the Sinopharm vaccine.”

South Africa, which has the largest number of COVID-19 cases on the continent and has seen the emergence of a new, more aggressive strain of the virus, has also started vaccinating its population.

But only 23,059 people received the single blow Johnson & Johnson vaccines of the country’s 58 million people, according to Bloomberg data.

In Mauritius, 3,843 doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine made in India under the Covishield brand were administered. In Guinea, 55 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine backed by the Russian government were administered as part of a pilot program. In Algeria, 30 Doses of Sputnik V were administered. Reports say vaccinations have started in Senegal as well.

Other African countries, including Ghana, Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea, have received vaccines from India, China, Russia and the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX), an initiative led by the World Health Organization to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines across the world.

Ghana this week received 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and plans to launch a national immunization program next month. Acting Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah urged members of the public to “do your part in ensuring that you are vaccinated when the vaccine reaches you.”

Dr Michael Owusu, Lecturer in the Department of Medical Diagnostics at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, vouches for vaccine safety.

“Vaccines are safe. Reports say that there may be side effects including pain, chills, headache, and fever, which will last for short durations, such as a few days. They are similar to the side effects of previous vaccines. The data does not show that we will have serious side effects like chronic disease and death, ”he explained.

Referring to the popular AstraZaneca / Oxford vaccines, Owusu explained, “These vector-based and messenger-based vaccines are some of the safest vaccines you can find. We took much wilder vaccines like polio and yellow fever, which are weak viruses. And we were able to pass.

“But if we have vaccines from a section of a virus designed in laboratory, it is much safer. We have nothing to fear. So I don’t expect to see people taking these vaccines and having serious effects. Because most of the information shows that it is safe thanks to the technology used, ”he added.