The director of the African Union Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, said Thursday (22) that the “realistic goal” is to reach 30% of the African population vaccinated by the end of the year.
“The realistic goal is to immunize 25 to 30% of the African population by the end of the year,” said the official during his weekly press conference, in which he stressed that “if the vaccines arrive in August and distribution is accelerated in September and October, it is very possible to achieve this goal.”
In the weekly meeting, broadcasted from Addis Ababa, John Nkengasong said that the African continent has already acquired 82.7 million doses for 51 countries and assured that the doses are not being wasted.
“Of those, 61.3 million have been administered, which is 74% of the total, so the vaccines are not being wasted,” he said, noting that “Morocco has used 80% of the doses, South Africa 64%, Egypt 68%, and Nigeria 99.9%,” while Tanzania, Eritrea, and Burundi “have not started vaccination yet.”
Still, Nkengasong regretted that only 1.3% of Africans have received full coverage and argued that the purchase and distribution of vaccines must be accelerated, otherwise new variants will emerge and the end of the pandemic will be delayed.
In the week ending July 18, there was a 3% decrease in new cases compared to the previous seven days, and a 12% increase in the number of deaths, which rose from 5,492 in the week of July 4-10 to 6,161 deaths from July 11-18.
