Ghana has just received its first Covid-19 vaccine doses from Covax, the global initiative to ensure all countries have access to vaccines.
A total of 600,000 doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Wednesday. It is the official start of a long worldwide vaccination campaign.
Ghana is the first country to receive these vaccines. It will begin the rollout next week, starting with primary care health professionals, the elderly and those with underlying conditions. However, the 600,000 doses will cover only a fraction of Ghana’s approximately 30 million inhabitants.
The Accra batch is the first to be shipped from the COVAX facility in Africa and delivered as part of an unprecedented effort to deliver at least 2 billion doses of #COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021 – which will be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history. pic.twitter.com/psIFnKYlPc
– World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) February 24, 2021
Ivory Coast is next to receive vaccine doses from Covax. But immunization campaigns in Africa have only just begun, after millions upon millions of shots have been delivered in wealthier countries.
Covax, which is led by the World Health Organization, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, is designed to ensure equal access to vaccines for every country, regardless of wealth. Today, the initiative aims to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, most of which will go to 92 of the world’s poorest countries.
But the initiative was slow to take off, especially as it fights richer countries for vaccine doses.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organization, said this week that more than 210 million doses of vaccine have been distributed in just two countries, while more than 200 countries have not yet started giving their first doses.
Rich countries – with more than 14 percent of the world’s population – have bought up more than 53 percent of the vaccines most likely to succeed through pre-purchase agreements. At the moment, the demand for vaccines is outstripping supply, so even these wealthier countries can’t get into arms fast enough. But they will likely be able to do that in a matter of months – in the summer, for example, in the US – compared to some of the world’s poorest countries, where it could take years.
Many countries in Africa have not experienced the dramatic peaks in Covid-19 seen in other parts of the world. But a year after the pandemic, some of the continent’s 54 countries are facing an increase in the number of cases fueled by new variants, including one discovered in South Africa. This week, the entire African continent reached 100,000 known Covid-19 deaths.
Despite this, only a handful of African countries have even started vaccinations. According to the African Union, a total of 1.5 billion vaccine doses are needed to inoculate 60 percent of the continent’s more than 1 billion inhabitants. While the African Union and countries are trying to negotiate agreements – including with Russia and China – many countries will need Covax’s help.
The United States recently pledged a hefty $ 4 billion incentive to Covax to help fund and deliver vaccines. But if rich countries continue to stockpile vaccine, the rate of vaccination will still be slow in the less prosperous countries.
Beyond funding, global vaccination efforts only need more vaccine supplies, along with efforts to increase manufacturing and manufacturing capacity in low-income countries and to induce pharmaceutical companies to potentially waive intellectual property rights to better share knowledge and technology .
It will take a huge effort to get the whole world vaccinated. It is not only a moral obligation to ensure that the entire world population has access to protective vaccines; it is a necessity for public health. The coronavirus that is spreading in the far corner of the world remains a threat to everyone, especially as new variants emerge.