ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
The African Union’s disease control body said this weekend it had dropped plans to secure AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines for its members from the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine supplier, amid global shortfalls of the shot.
AstraZeneca’s
$3 shot is by far the cheapest coronavirus vaccine launched so far, and the
easiest to store and transport, making it well suited to developing countries.
On
Wednesday, European and British medicine regulators said they had found
possible links between the vaccine and extremely rare cases of brain blood
clots, while emphatically reaffirming its importance in mass vaccination
against Covid-19.
John
Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
(Africa CDC), said the AU’s decision had nothing to do with those findings, and
reiterated his advice that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks.
He said the
main reason was to avoid duplicating COVAX’s efforts by the World Health
Organization-backed COVAX facility, which will continue to supply AstraZeneca
to Africa.
He said the
AU was focusing on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, citing a deal announced
last week to supply Africa with up to 400 million doses.
COVAX aims
to deliver 600 million shots – most of them from AstraZeneca – to some 40
African countries this year, enough to vaccinate 20% of their populations.
Africa
trails most other regions in Covid-19 vaccinations; fewer than 13 million doses
have been administered on a continent of 1.3 billion people, according to the
Africa CDC.
The AU had
wanted to secure up to 500 million additional AstraZeneca shots for its 55
member states, at $3 per shot.
However,
last month India suspended its exports to meet rising domestic demand.
Nkengasong
said the subsequent delays were complicating vaccination across Africa, noting
that health systems had to know that second doses would be available in time
for those who had received a first dose.
Matshidiso
Moeti, who heads the WHO’s Africa office, confirmed the two organisations
wanted to ensure they were “not competing and stepping over each other looking
for the same vaccines”.
“I am very
much assured that it is not to do with doubts about the safety and other
considerations on the AstraZeneca vaccines. It’s simply to recognise that there
are challenges with the volumes that are available,” she told a separate news
briefing.
The
single-shot J&J doses secured last week will not arrive until the third
quarter, and Nkengasong said Africa would find it hard to bridge the gap in the
meantime.
South Africa
has cancelled orders of the AstraZeneca vaccine after finding it gave only
minimal protection against mild-to-moderate infection caused by the country’s
dominant, highly infectious variant.
Russia and
China are also offering vaccines, but there are questions about their cost and
availability in large volumes.
The virus is
confirmed to have killed 114 000 people across Africa, and infected 4.33
million.
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