10 December 2021
Innocent Sibonginkosi Ncube
China has pledged to provide one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including 600 million as direct donations and 400 million doses to be jointly produced by Chinese and identified African countries.
This was revealed in the 42nd Post Cabinet briefing by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Hon. Dr Fredrick Shava, held last Tuesday
In his presentation Dr. Shava expressed that “Zimbabwe will make a submission to be one of those African countries”.
Ever since the outbreak of the coronavirus, African Countriee have widely depended on the vaccines produced by companies from either the West or from China.
In as much as there was approval of four vaccines namely, Sputnik V from Russia, Covaxin from India, Zimbabwe is heavily dependent on the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines which are produced in China.
To date, Harare has balanced its purchased vaccine stocks through donations from China.
In just ended 8th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Senegal, China has said it will assist chosen African nations to produce their own vaccines so as,
“… to help Africa achieve its goal of vaccinating 60% of its population by 2022.”
According to Carnegie Endowment International Peace more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, the African continent has fully vaccinated only 3 percent of its 1.2 billion people. This vaccination rate lags far behind other parts of the world, including Europe with nearly 50 percent vaccinated, North America 44 percent, Asia 32 percent, and South America 33 percent.
At this rate, it appears that neither the African Union’s goal of 60 percent vaccination by 2023 nor the global vaccine distribution mechanism COVAX’s goal of 20 percent by 2022 will be reached in time.
Thus the major reason for the low vaccination uptake in Africa is the lack of vaccination supplies.
Africa manufactures less than one percent of all vaccines administered on the continent. African countries that are more reliant on COVAX for doses have faced severe supply shortages.
Western manufacturers are giving preference to wealthy countries’ purchasing agreements and India’s export restrictions on the Covishield vaccine has made the situation worse for Africa.
The African Union (AU) Special Envoy on COVID-19 bluntly blamed the WHO co-sponsored COVAX facility for the dire vaccine shortage on the continent, saying that it had failed to disclose its vaccine supply problems early enough.
Strive Masiyiwa, AU Special Envoy and head of the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) said that had COVAX been honest about its lack of vaccine supplies at the start of the year, the continent might not be facing such a dire shortage of vaccines.
When AVATT met COVAX “back in January”, said Masiyiwa, “we were given a schedule in writing that we would receive vaccines from the end of February, going through to December”.
Masiyiwa also questioned the global vaccine programme’s reliance on the Serum Institute of India (SII), revealing that AVATT had met with the SII late in 2020 – well before India’s COVID crisis – and decided not to do business with it because it was clear it would be unable to meet its orders.
It is with such hiccups that China has come up with the idea to select African countries that may manufacture vaccines from the continent.
But not many countries have faith with China.
Countries like South Africa approved the Chinese Vaccines after the third wave of the pandemic had devastated the nation.
Prior, South Africa had shunned the doses from China in preference of those from Western Countries, specifically Johnson and Johnson.
Unfortunately for South Africa’s, its low vaccination rate was due to a combination factors including bad luck, the government had to destroy 2 million contaminated Johnson & Johnson vaccines, there was slow bureaucracy to deal with, and richer countries immunising their own citizens first while the developing world waits for its doses.
Currently, South Africa is among the 6 countries in Africa that are manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines.
Efforts are being made to ramp up production of COVID-19 vaccines on the African continent. As of September 2021, there are at least twelve COVID-19 production facilities set up or in the pipeline across six African countries. African COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing in the coming year could range from Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinovac vaccines.
In the meantime in Zimbabwe, the Omicron variant is spreading Covid-19 infections far more than the initial figures when the first infection was detected in the country.
5 189 cases were detected as if the 9th of December and 3 people have unfortunately lost their lives to the virus across the country.
It has been reported that there has been an outbreak of a strange flu that, previously, has been affecting children. In the last two weeks adults have been bogged with the same flu that causes severe headache, an unbareable sore throat a congested chest and runny nose.
Those affected lose appetite.
A pharmacist who asked to withhold his name commented of the flu,
“I have run out of most cough mixtures as well as flu medicines. There is a bug that is spreading like a veld fire.”
Asked if it was the Omicron variant causing this bug to affect many people, he said he was not the ‘rightful person to give that answer’.
Africa needs a local vaccine as soon as possible so as to attain heard immunity, and this can only be achieved if Africa produces its own vaccines.
Zim GBC News