The United States government has announced that it will ship
nearly 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to two of the most populous
African countries – Nigeria and South Africa on Wednesday(today) as the
continent battles the third wave of infections, though delivery dates were not
specified.
Recall the US President, Joe Biden, promised to donate 80
million vaccines to Africa with another promise of 500 million vaccines to
low-income and middle-income countries.
The Minister of health, Osagie Ehanire, during a press
briefing, had also disclosed that Nigeria was expecting no fewer than 41 million
vaccines before the end of 2021 while others will be coming in 2022 to enable
the country to vaccinate at least 70 per cent of the entire population.
A report by Reuters on Wednesday morning, however, stated
that out of the 10 million vaccine doses to be shipped, four million doses of
the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine will go to Nigeria and 5.66 million doses of the
Pfizer vaccine to South Africa, the officials said.
The South Africa shipment is the single largest sent by the
United States since it began sending vaccine shots overseas, one of the
officials said. The latest shipments bring the total number of US vaccine doses
sent to Africa to 16.4 million.
The urgently needed help comes amid growing concern about
vaccination rates in Africa, which lag far behind those of advanced economies.
As of last week, African countries had administered just 60
million vaccine doses to a population that numbers over 1.3 billion, in part
due to restrictions on shipments from vaccine-producing countries like India.
Experts worry that the highly contagious Delta variant could
pose another setback if countries begin requiring booster shots for fully
vaccinated individuals, a move that would slow shipments of urgently needed
vaccines to developing countries.
The White House said equitable global access to safe and
effective vaccines was essential to ending the pandemic.
“We are working to get as many safe and effective vaccines
to as many people around the world as fast as possible,” one of the White House
officials was quoted to have said.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com