A World Health Organization (WHO) Africa Regional Director Matshidiso Moeti on Thursday said COVID-19 vaccinations in African nations have tripled during the past week, but protecting even 10 percent of the continent by the end of September still remains a very cumbersome task, reported VOA News.
During a virtual briefing on the status of the pandemic in Africa, Moeti said that 24 countries were seeing a resurgence of infections driven by the Delta variant and that the number of deaths was rising in eight countries.
“This is a preventable tragedy if African countries can get fair access to the vaccines,” the WHO Africa director said.
Moeti said that about 13 million vaccine doses were administered in the last week, three times more than the number of doses given in the previous week.
She said many of the doses came from donations from developed countries and sharing arrangements through the WHO-led COVAX vaccine facility.
The WHO Africa director said 117 million doses were expected to arrive in Africa in September. But she said another 34 million doses are needed to meet the goal of having at least 10 percent of the continent vaccinated by the end of September. She went on to urge countries with ample supplies to keep sharing vaccine doses.
“With international solidarity, we can protect those at highest risk of COVID-19 in all countries in the world,” Moeti said.
She also urged African governments to make sure proper staffing and financial resources were available when shots arrived so that no precious doses get wasted.
Notably, the vaccination number still remains low in the continent which is home to 1.3 billion people, where the Africa CDC said only 2.4 percent is currently vaccinated.
According to Africa CDC, the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 from 55 African countries reached 7,622,944 as of August 26.
