The African continent is not on track to vaccinate 10% of its population against COVID-19 by the end of this year, a World Health Organization official said during a press conference Friday.
“That should be a scar on all of our consciences,” said Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “There are enough vaccines in the world. There is enough money in the world. There is enough absorptive capacity — definitely on the African continent — enough demand for the product that they could easily hit 30-40% coverage were the vaccine made available.”
Why this matters: Only 1.6% of the population on the continent has been fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, immunization rates are currently around 70% in some high-income countries, Tedros said.
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WHO has a global target for countries to vaccinate 10% of their populations by the end of September. Nearly 70% of African countries will not reach this goal, Tedros said. Vaccine shipments to African nations have increased in recent weeks, and now around 3.5 million to 4 million doses are administered weekly on the continent, he said. But to meet the September target, this would need to rise to 21 million vaccine doses per week.
Deaths from COVID-19 have increased by 80% in Africa over the past four weeks.
A fool's bargain: The world has administered over 4 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses. If those had been prioritized for people over 60 years old and at high risk, “we basically could have gotten two doses into everybody at highest risk of severe consequences,” Aylward said.
As new variants of the coronavirus spread rapidly between countries, “it's a bit of a fool's bargain to think that you can vaccinate your way out of this in one country without paying attention to the rest of the world,” he said.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
