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Vaccine deliveries to Africa through the World Health Organisation’s Covax facility have ground to a near halt in May as Serum Institute of India “diverted doses for domestic use”, said a note from the WHO’s Africa regional office.
“Between February and May the continent received just about a quarter – 18.2 million – of the 66 million expected doses through Covax,” it added, outlining the reasons that were delaying the roll out of the Covid-19 vaccine in Africa. A blockage on supplies and financial challenges, it said, were putting at risk plans to significantly expand the continent’s roll out by later this year.
“As people living in richer countries hit the reset button this summer and their lives start to look normal, in Africa our lives will stay on hold. This is unjust,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
“We are optimistic that vaccine availability will improve significantly in the second half of the year. We can still catch up and make up for the lost ground, but time is running out.”
The Covax facility was in active negotiations with other manufacturers of vaccines to diversify the portfolio while supporting the medium- to long-term scale up of manufacturing capacity, it said.
“The supply gap can be closed if countries with surplus doses set aside a percentage of vaccines for Covax,” said Dr Moeti, lauding the US’ decision to share 80 million doses with other countries, besides France’s recent shipments to Mauritania. “Dose- sharing is key to ending the supply crunch and the pandemic as a whole, as no one is safe until everyone is safe,” said Dr Moeti.
Operational costs
While limited supplies of doses are hampering the large-scale roll out of vaccines, funding for operational costs is also a critical barrier.
Eight countries have used up all their vaccines, but over 20 countries have administered less than 50 per cent of their doses, it pointed out.
Covax is providing its share of vaccines for free to lower-income countries, but there are other significant costs. It is estimated that 60 per cent of every dollar spent on delivering vaccines is needed for operations. The World Bank calculates that on top of the money needed to buy enough vaccines to ensure adequate protection from Covid-19, another 3 billion is required to deliver the vaccines into the arms of people, the note said.
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