As COVID-19 cases in Africa rise for the third week running and vaccines are increasingly scarce, 47 of Africa’s 54 countries—nearly 90%—are set to miss the September target of vaccinating 10% of their people unless Africa receives 225 million more doses.
Angola has reached the milestone of more than one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered after receiving the first doses from COVAX, a partnership between Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI )and WHO, which aims to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines against COVID-19, worldwide.
As the risk of a surge in COVID-19 cases increases, African countries must urgently boost critical care capacity to prevent health facilities from being overwhelmed. This comes as vaccine shipments to the continent grind to a near halt.
Africa needs at least 20 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the next six weeks to get second doses to all who received a first dose within the 8—12-week interval between doses recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Pemba, 21 May 2021 – More than 1.2 million people urgently need health assistance in Cabo Delgado Province in northern Mozambique where recent armed attacks sparked further population displacement and deepened a protracted humanitarian crisis.
A blockage on supplies and financial challenges are delaying Africa’s rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and risk curtailing plans to significantly expand the continent’s rollout later this year.
The WHO Regional Office for Africa wishes to provide clarification and guidance on the issue of expiry dates of COVID-19 vaccines in general, and specifically on AstraZeneca vaccine doses produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) – referred to as Covishield, that were delivered to several African countries and have since expired
Zimbabwe has upscaled the use of antigen rapid diagnostic tests to reinforce its COVID-19 response, hitting a daily rate of 4000 tests – a fourfold increase reached within just two months after the method was launched in November 2020.
With Africa-bound COVID-19 vaccine doses from the Serum Institute of India delayed for the foreseeable future, slow vaccine rollouts and new variants making inroads, the risk of a new wave of infections in Africa remains high.
Today marks the end of the 12th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just three months after the first case was reported in North Kivu. The Ebola outbreak that re-emerged in February came nine months after another outbreak in the same province was declared over.
