WHO Speculates Africa Won't Reach 70% Vaccination Goal Until Late 2024

News

By Maximillian Boudreaux Published: December 14, 2021

WHO Speculates Africa Won’t Reach 70% Vaccination Goal Until Late 2024

A clinical trials patient receives a dose of AstraZeneca test vaccine at the University of Witwatersrand' Soweto's Chris Sani Baragwanath Hospital facility outside Johannesburg Nov. 30, 2020. South Africa is scrambling to come up with a new vaccination strategy to combat COVID-19 following its suspension of the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after a preliminary test showed weak results in protecting the variant dominant in this country. Among the possibilities being considered are giving one dose of AstraZeneca in the hopes it will protect against severe disease and death from the variant. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The World Health Organization believes Africa won’t be able to reach its goal of vaccinating 70% of its 1.3 billion population against COVID-19 until late into 2024, ABC News reported.

This news was released after a recent rise in cases due to the arrival of the new omicron variant. Health authorities in South Africa, where the variant was first announced, claimed that new information revealed this variant causes a less severe illness and shorter and less intensive time in the hospital.

Some richer countries have tried to fast-track getting booster doses to their population in response to the new variant. In contrast, only 8% of Africa’s population has gotten both doses.

“We will never get out of this if we don’t work together as one world,” Flavia Senkubuge, president of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, told reporters at the WHO briefing.

📺LIVE: Tune in for this @WHOAFRO press briefing on the #COVID19 pandemic, the #Omicron variant and vaccine rollout in #Africa. Dr @MoetiTshidi is joined by Professor Flavia Senkubuge. https://t.co/Vxyu0BojLs
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) December 14, 2021

Only 20 of Africa’s 54 countries have fully vaccinated at least 10% of their populations against COVID-19. In comparison, 10 countries have fully vaccinated less than 2% of their people.

WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti denied that African nations are letting large numbers of vaccines go to waste amid poor infrastructure and vaccine hesitancy.

The African continent has received about 434 million vaccine doses, and some 910,000 of them have expired in 20 countries, representing less than a quarter of 1%, Moeti said.

The main challenge in Africa, she said, remains access to vaccine supplies.