Only five African nations are on track to fully inoculate 40% of their populations against COVID-19 by the end of the year — a global goal set by the World Health Assembly in May — as the continent faces a shortfall of 275 million vaccine doses.
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The Seychelles, Mauritius, and Morocco have already reached the target, with Tunisia and Cape Verde expected to follow within the next two months. But overall, just 77 million people — less than 6% of the continent’s population — are fully vaccinated.
Another failure: This is the second global vaccination goal that the majority of African nations will have failed to meet. The World Health Assembly called for vaccinating 10% of the population in every country by the end of September, but about 70% of African nations didn’t reach that target.
“If the 6.8 billion vaccine doses administered globally so far had been distributed equitably, we would have reached our 40% target in every country by now,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a news briefing Thursday.
Misplaced supply: Globally, 82 countries are at risk of missing the 40% goal “only because of a lack of supply,” said Bruce Aylward, coordinator and lead at the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator initiative. An additional 550 million vaccine doses are needed to hit the target. Manufacturers are expected to make another 3 billion doses by the end of the year.
“Can we take 550 million doses of that — about 10 days’ [worth] of production — and make sure it goes into [the vaccine-sharing initiative] COVAX and the other mechanisms that can get the equitable distribution?” Aylward said. “This is a very solvable problem. … It’s an issue of the will, and the manufacturers cooperating then to make sure the doses go where they’re needed.”
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.
