Brazzaville – Africa has made progress in COVID-19 vaccination. The continent has to date received around 824 million COVID-19 vaccines, says the World Health Organi.
The COVAX Facility, the multilateral platform established to facilitate equity in global vaccine distribution, has delivered more than 60% of these doses, while around 33% have been procured by countries through bilateral deals and donations. The African Vaccine Acquisition Trust has delivered around 7% and the rest are from other sources
Although vaccination coverage is still low, with only 19% of the African population fully vaccinated, some countries have accelerated their vaccine rollouts in the first six months of 2022. Of the 26 countries that had fully vaccinated less than 10% of their populations by the end of 2021, nine surpassed 15% by the end of May 2022. These countries implemented nationwide mass vaccination campaigns and integrated COVID-19 vaccination into routine immunization campaigns. Six of these countries are those that have had intensified support from multi-partner country support teams which include WHO, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and other partners.
These teams will continue to support countries that have less than 10% of their populations fully vaccinated in the last six months of 2022 to unlock financing and improve vaccine delivery strategies and implement mass vaccination campaigns until the end of the year.
To date, at least 32 countries have planned mass vaccination campaigns until end of the year. During mass vaccination campaigns, WHO recommends that countries set up bespoke service delivery strategies for targeted vaccination of high-priority groups – health workers, older adults and people with comorbidities.