Africa has secured 400 million doses of J&J Covid-19 vaccines, enough to vaccinate more than half its target of 750m people, as it edges towards the third wave of infections, said Africa CDC director, Dr John Nkengasong, at his weekly coronavirus update on Thursday.
More than 4.2 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Africa and more than 112,820 deaths, accounting for 4% of deaths reported globally. Africa has reported 3% of the world’s Covid-19 cases.
Overall death rates have decreased by 13% in Africa in March, but 21 countries have case fatality rates higher than the global average of 2.2%.
To date more than 10 million Africans have been vaccinated and 39.1 million doses have been acquired by the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Force (AVATT). The vaccination target for the continent is 30%-35% of the population this year and 60% of the 1.2 billion people living in Africa in total.
India’s decision to halt the export of AstraZeneca vaccines — the vaccine acquired by the COVAX vaccine sharing platform for low- and middle-income countries — puts the 30% target for 2021 at risk.
“This will definitely affect our ability to continuously vaccinate people,” said Nkengasong. “If the delay continues, and I really want to hope it is a delay and not a ban because that would be catastrophic, meeting our vaccination schedule would become problematic.”
The J&J vaccines, being manufactured at the Aspen Pharmacare plant in Gqeberha, are expected only from June to July onwards.