When will COVID-19 vaccinations start in African countries?

 With the United Kingdom rolling out the world’s first approved coronavirus vaccine this week and other clinical trials showing promising results, the focus has swiftly turned towards the distribution of the doses worldwide and which countries will get them first – and which will be pushed to the back of the queue.

On Thursday, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director John Nkengasong warned “it will be extremely terrible to see” wealthy nations obtaining vaccines and African countries missing out, as he called on for an extraordinary United Nations session to discuss this “moral issue” and avoid a “North-South distrust in respect to vaccines, which is a common good”.

Countries across Africa have largely been praised for their response to COVID-19 since the first infection was confirmed on the continent on February 14 in Egypt. Despite some observers’ initial doomsday predictions, the continent so far appears to have been spared the worst of the pandemic. Still, uncertainty remains and the threat of further economic pain due to the prospect of additional lockdowns have given the discussions about vaccine distribution extra urgency.

There are, however, a number of challenges.

Expressing concern over what it has branded as the continent’s “largest ever immunisation drive”, the World Health Organization has said the African region has an average score of 33 percent readiness for a COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, well below the desired 80 percent.

Meanwhile, Nkengasong has stressed it is necessary to be realistic about immunisation campaigns due to challenges on how vaccines would be delivered across the continent, adding that it is unlikely that this will happen before the middle of 2021.

For Catherine Kyobutungi, epidemiologist and executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, a big challenge regarding access to vaccines is “a lack of global solidarity”.

“We’ve seen reports about countries like the US and UK securing a huge share of vaccine doses, which then leaves you wondering, what about the rest of us?”

In a similar vein, the People’s Vaccine Alliance – a coalition of campaign organisations including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Global Justice Now – has condemned rich countries for “hoarding” vaccine doses to the detriment of poorer nations.

“Wealthier nations have bought up enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations nearly three times over by the end of 2021 if those currently in clinical trials are all approved for use,” it said.

“Canada tops the chart with enough vaccines to vaccinate each Canadian five times. Updated data shows that rich nations representing just 14 per cent of the world’s population have bought up 53 per cent of all the most promising vaccines so far.”

Tied to all this are financial constraints and the huge investments required to roll out vaccination campaigns, noted Benjamin Kagina, a senior researcher in vaccinology at The Vaccines for Africa Initiative, University of Cape Town.