- 25 million vaccines will start from Burkina Faso, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
- A total of 49 African countries will be vaccinated against Johnson & Johnson, Moderna or Pfizer.
- Burkina Faso and Djibouti will receive 151,200 doses of Johnson & Johnson, while Ethiopia will receive 453,600 doses.
The United States announced on Friday that it will ship 25 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Africa from Burkina Faso, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Officials told AFP that goods from the first three countries will be shipped within a few days. In the next few weeks, a total of 49 African countries will be vaccinated against Johnson & Johnson, Moderna or Pfizer.
A senior official in the Biden administration said that Djibouti and Burkina Faso will receive 151,200 doses of Johnson & Johnson, while Ethiopia will receive 453,600 doses.
The surge in vaccine doses on the African continent is being coordinated with multilateral agencies including the African Union and Covax, a distributor supported by the World Health Organization and the Gavi Vaccine Alliance.
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The world is facing an increasing impact from the highly virulent delta strain of the coronavirus, with new outbreaks emerging from Australia to the United States and Africa.
The WHO said on Thursday that overall, due to lack of intensive care beds and oxygen, the number of deaths related to the coronavirus in Africa has increased by 43% within a week.
U.S. State Department Covid-19 and Global Health Coordinator Gal Smith said: “In cooperation with the African Union and Covax, the United States is proud to be able to donate 25 million Covid-19 vaccines.”
Smith said:
The Biden administration is committed to leading the global response to the pandemic.
The African Union special envoy Strive Masiyiwa said that the vaccine will once again promote the African Union’s goal of vaccinating 60% of the African continent’s population, “especially at the moment when we are witnessing a third wave of epidemics in some African countries.”
Benedict Oramah, president of Afreximbank, also helped coordinate aid, calling the US donation a “welcome and important gesture.”
He said that, along with other measures, “there is reason to be optimistic that the African Union will achieve the goal of at least 60% vaccination coverage.”
-Gap in vaccines-
The coronavirus pandemic has seen a huge gap in vaccine distribution around the world, with few vaccines being available in poorer regions, while the United States and other wealthy countries have launched large-scale domestic vaccination programs.
This subsequently led to so-called vaccine diplomacy, in which the geopolitical powers and vaccine manufacturers of China and Russia are accused of using their jabs to promote their strategic footprint.
The United States denies that it is competing with its competitors, but Biden has put the United States at the center of international efforts to eliminate the global crisis as a priority.
He has pledged to distribute the initial 80 million doses of vaccine for international distribution.
In addition, the Biden administration has pledged to donate US$2 billion to Covax.
It also purchased 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for the African Union and 92 poorer countries. At the recent G7 summit in the UK, the US partners agreed to donate another 500 million doses.
The White House said that so far, the United States has provided about 40 million doses of vaccines to distant countries such as South Korea and Honduras.
