Only 5 African nations set to hit year-end COVID-19 vaccination goal

People wait in line for COVID-19 vaccination at a mobile immunization center in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo by: ​​Luc Gnago / Reuters

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.”