With the Covax mechanism having downgraded its forecast for shipping COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries, Africa will miss almost 500 million doses compared to the global target of 40% of vaccines in the region. end of the year, regretted Thursday the WHO.
Running out of doses, Covax will ship around 150 million fewer vaccines to Africa than planned.
Taking this deficit into account, the 470 million doses of vaccine expected on the continent will allow only 17% of the population to be vaccinated, estimated the regional office for Africa of the World Health Organization during its account. weekly return. It would take twice as much to reach 40%.
This shortage of vaccines comes as Africa crossed the 8 million infections mark this week, underlines the WHO.
Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Africa director, lamented that “rich countries are working to push Covax out of the market”, depriving this mechanism of sufficient doses. According to her, “the huge disparities in equity in access to vaccines are far from being closed as quickly as necessary”.
Around 95 million doses are expected to be received in Africa via Covax during the month of September but, despite the resumption of shipments, “Africa has only been able to vaccinate 50 million people, or 3.6% of its population” , recalls WHO Africa.
The Covax international funding mechanism is supposed to enable 92 disadvantaged states and territories to receive free vaccines funded by more prosperous nations.
Last week, it had to revise its forecasts downwards, its founders explaining the lack of available doses “by export bans, the priority given to bilateral agreements between manufacturers and countries, delays in filing applications. approval ”, etc.
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Reference-feedproxy.google.com