Africa Centre for Disease Control has revealed that the African Union has gotten an additional 400m doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
This is barely a week after 270m doses of the vaccine were acquired.
Many African countries have not started vaccinating their citizens as they cannot afford the cost of purchasing vaccines amid a growing vaccine nationalism.
“An additional 400 million doses of vaccines have been secured from the Serum Institute of India,” Africa CDC director, John Nkengasong told a press conference.
“If you add 400 million doses to the 270 million doses, I think we are beginning to make very, very good progress.”
Africa is also expected to benefit from the World Health Organisation’s COVAX initiative.
The 670m doses already secured from the SII are part of India’s production using the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula.
Africa will need at least 1.5bn doses to vaccinate 60% of its 1.3bn population, and less than half of have been secured.
Economic giants- South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and others have finalised plans to buy vaccines from manufacturers.
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa had on Tuesday accused the big countries of the world of hoarding COVID-19 vaccines to the detriment of the developing nations.
South Africa was also confirmed to have paid a higher price for doses of vaccines in comparison with richer EU countries.
