The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Thursday urged COVID-19 vaccine buyers to place orders with South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare, saying the market was the key to developing vaccine manufacturing on the African continent, reported Reuters.
The Africa CDC said it was doing everything it could behind the scenes to prevent a situation where Aspen closes its facility due to a lack of orders.
“We have said from the very beginning of the conversation on local production that market, market, market is the key to ensuring that we have a thriving local production, manufacturing enterprise,” said Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa CDC.
Notably, in November last year, Aspen signed a licensing deal to package and sell Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine and distribute it across Africa.
But, unfortunately, Aspen’s COVID-19 vaccine plant now risks shutting down after receiving not a single order for its Aspenovax vaccine, a company executive said on Saturday.
In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Aspen’s CEO Stephen Saad said the company currently has the capacity to produce around one million vaccine doses per day. Roughly half of that is being used to fulfill a supply agreement with J&J.
He said the remaining capacity, which had been expected to produce Aspenovax shots destined for the African market, is currently sitting idle.
“Our message is that we need to have all those who are purchasing vaccines at the global level for African countries, they need to purchase those from African producers first,” the Africa CDC official said at a media briefing.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told journalists that he was engaging with the leaders of Kenya, Rwanda, Egypt, and Ghana to purchase vaccine supplies from the Aspen plant. He said fear of the Aspen dilemma is that it could dissuade other countries from establishing their own Covid-19 plants.
