COVID-19 Vaccines: France to send 100mln doses to Africa

France will send 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa over the next three months, the French presidency said in a statement on Monday.

The African Union’s Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) will allocate and distribute vaccines through and Covax. AVAT is a means of enabling group purchases of vaccines by AU members to help them meet at least 50 percent of their needs.

At a conference in Berlin last week, African leaders renewed calls for vaccine equity. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said it was unfair that richer countries had vaccinated nearly their entire adult populations while poorer countries struggled to buy vaccines.

Africa has administered the least vaccines to any continent. Only 2% of Africa’s population of 1.2 billion has received full vaccination. African countries have mostly relied on multilateral and bi-lateral donations. Activists have called the inequity vaccine apartheid.

The African Union is looking to set up vaccine production sites in five countries. So far, Egypt and South Africa have begun local production of Sinovac and J&J vaccines, respectively. Enough for 400 million people.

The statement by Macron’s office said that by September 2022 had now purchased enough jabs through AVAT to enable vaccination of 400 million people in Africa — a third of the continent’s population at a cost of three billion dollars.

In August the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a moratorium on giving third doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines until at least the end of September, to allow at least 10 percent of the population of every country to be vaccinated.

So far, low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply. The WHO said on Monday that the Republic of Congo has received over 300,000 vaccines doses from the United States, its first under Covax.

Suzan o/AFP