Africa's lagging Covid 19 rollout as deaths spike Dr Michael Owusu

Joseph Opoku speaks with Dr Michael Owusu, clinical microbiologist and lecturer at the Department of Medical Diagnostics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana https://allianceforscience.cornell.ed... As wealthy nations hoard COVID-19 vaccine supplies, Africa is lagging in the global effort to immunize people against the disease even as its fatality numbers spike. Though Africa has 17 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for just 0.2 percent of the 209 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered to people across the globe. Meanwhile, the continent is experiencing a sharp rise in COVID infections and fatalities. As of Feb. 22, some 2.66 million doses had been administered to people living in at least seven of Africa’s 55 countries, according to data from Bloomberg that the Alliance for Science analyzed. By comparison, the United States had administered 64.28 million doses by that same date and the United Kingdom had given 18.34 million doses. Israel has administered 7.4 million doses, China 40.5 million doses and Russia 2.2 million doses, according to the Bloomberg tracker. South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also chairman of the African Union, recently called on wealthy nations to make more COVID-19 vaccines available to the rest of the world. He criticized them for hoarding vaccine supplies. “The rich countries of the world went out and acquired large doses. Some even acquired up to four times what their population needs … to the exclusion of other countries,” Ramaphosa observed during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The European Union has ordered 525 million more full vaccinations than will be needed to vaccinate all its population, said Robin Cohen, a professor of development studies at the University of Oxford, after analyzing data from the Duke Health Innovation Center. The UK has ordered 65 million surplus full vaccinations, while Canada has ordered 156 million excess full vaccinations. Other wealthy nations have similarly ordered doses far in excess of what they need. The African Union recently announced it has secured 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for the continent under COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative, bringing the total number of COVID-19 doses secured for Africa to 1.27 billion doses. However, it could take years before all those doses become available and at least 1.5 billion doses will be needed to vaccinate just 60 percent of the continent’s population.