The African Union (AU) intends to buy up to 110 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna, a biotechnology company, as part of an agreement partially brokered by the United States Joe Biden administration, reported Aljazeera.
The vaccine doses will be delivered over the coming months. 15 million doses will arrive before the end of the year, 35 million in the first quarter of 2022 and up to 60 million in the second quarter.
AU coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa said the deal is important as it allows African countries to increase the number of vaccines available immediately.
“We urge other vaccine producing countries to follow the lead of the [US government] and give us similar access to buy this and other vaccines,” Masiyiwa said.
The announcement by AU comes amidst severe global COVID-19 vaccine inequity. While high-income countries have already begun giving third booster vaccine shots to their people as well as vaccinating younger members of their populations, many African countries still haven’t been able to vaccinate half of their population. The high-income countries are also stockpiling unused doses, with 100 million doses expected to expire in the near future.
Moderna said it was working to make it possible to fill doses of its COVID-19 vaccines in Africa by 2023 and has plans to build a manufacturing plant on the continent.
The G-20 member countries have pledged over 1.2 billion doses to COVAX the international vaccine-sharing initiative, but have delivered only 150 million.
Only about 5% of the African continent is fully vaccinated, with African nations only receiving about 252.5 million doses in total.
The AU has also struggled to secure COVID-19 vaccines, despite having the funds to purchase them because high-income countries pre-purchased most of the available vaccines far into the future last year.
Natalie Quillian, the White House’s deputy coordinator for COVID-19 response, said the Biden administration is deferring delivery of 33 million doses it had bought from Moderna to let the AU make the purchase.
