The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) today called the purchase of covid-19 vaccines jointly by African countries a “historic milestone”, but warned that the continent is far from group immunity.
“The African Union initiative concerning the purchase of 400 million doses of vaccines for AU members and Caribbean countries, announced in August, was a historic milestone for Africa,” wrote UNECA’s executive director in a text published on the organisation’s website.
“The emergence of the pandemic crushed the continent’s health systems, causing the biggest economic blow in 25 years, but with the implementation of the joint procurement of vaccines, for the first time African countries pooled their financial and diplomatic efforts and spoke as a united and strong group at the negotiating table for the purchase of vaccines,” Vera Songwe stressed.
Recalling that this has made it possible to order 220 million Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccines, in addition to other international and bilateral commitments, Songwe said that these purchases would “immunise a third of the population and put Africa halfway towards the goal of vaccinating at least 60 percent of the population.
She warned, however, that the continent “needs to vaccinate at least 65 percent of the population to achieve group immunity and fully reopen economies, which translates into 1.5 billion vaccines, which may cost between US$8 billion and US$16 billion [6.7 billion to 13.5 billion euros], plus another 20 to 30 percent of the costs of the vaccine delivery and administration programme.
UNECA data points out that there is a $66 billion (€55.8 billion] gap in health funding and that the fact that African producers could only produce 2% of the medicines needed and 1% of vaccine orders “shows that the continent was clearly ill-prepared for the pandemic”.
