COVID-19 vaccines - The African Mirror

Sep

2021

Nigeria prioritising four COVID-19 vaccines

NIGERIA is prioritising the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the official heading Nigeria's COVID-19 vaccination campaign has said, when asked whether the Sinopharm shot would be used in the country. Dr Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria's primary healthcare agency, said the Sinopharm vaccine had been approved by the national medicines regulator "for emergency use", but rolling it out was not a priority. "We don't want a situation where we may have 10, 20 vaccines that have been globally recognised or listed for emergency use, and then you want to take all 20 vaccines to Nigeria, it doesn't…

Aug

2021

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 herd immunity? It’s not going to happen, so what next?

COVID-19

ANY notion that COVID-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. This is what happened in the flu epidemic of 1918. SHABIR A. MADHI, Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand In addition, very few scientists predicted that we would see the…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

U.S. gives 10 million doses to Nigeria, SA

COVID-19

ANDREA SHALAL THE U.S. government will ship nearly 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to two of the most populous African countries - Nigeria and South Africa - as the continent battles a third wave of infections, White House officials said. Four million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine will go to Nigeria and 5.66 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to South Africa, the officials said. The South Africa shipment is the single largest sent by the United States since it began sending vaccine shots overseas, one of the officials said. The latest shipments bring the total number of…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Uganda splashes on cars for MPs

NEWS

UGANDA has spent over $30.2 million on buying new vehicles for lawmakers, a move that has been slammed by critics who depict it as profligacy in a country struggling to buy vaccines to stem a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parliament released the money to members to buy new vehicles this week and each lawmaker was given 200 million shillings ($56,500), parliament's spokesperson, Chris Obore told Reuters. Uganda has 529 members of parliament (MPs). "MPs must do work, transport is part of the facilitation for them to do their work. They need to check on their constituencies, if they…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Landmark deal to make vaccine in SA

COVID-19

PFIZER and BioNTech have struck a deal for South Africa's Biovac Institute to help manufacture around 100 million doses a year of their COVID-19 vaccine for the African Union, the firms said on Wednesday. The deal is to "fill and finish" the vaccine, the final stages of manufacturing where the product is processed and put into vials. It does not cover the complicated processes of mRNA drug substance production, which Pfizer and BioNTech will do at their own facilities in Europe. The agreement comes as Pfizer and BioNTech try to sway World Trade Organization (WTO) members from supporting a waiver…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

The poor nations trailing in the fight against COVID-19

COVID-19

NITA BHALLA and ANASTASIA MOLONEY AT a private hospital in Burundi's capital, emergency specialist Emmanuel Kubwayo is worried for the first time since the coronavirus started spreading around the world last year. Kubwayo initially shared the government's view that the small central African country did not need COVID-19 vaccines because it had so few cases. But as deaths and infections surge across Africa, he has changed his mind. Along with Eritrea, Tanzania and North Korea, Burundi is one of a handful of nations that have not started vaccinations, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), potentially threatening global efforts to…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Africa needs fairness and vaccines to revive its tourism sector – minister

COVID-19

DUNCAN MIRIRI AFRICAN countries need to get equal access to COVID-19 vaccines so they can start rebuilding their devastated tourism industries, Kenya's tourism minister said on Friday. About 21 million jobs have been lost in the sector across the continent since the start of the pandemic, Najib Balala said on the sidelines of a meeting of his African counterparts, called by the United Nations to discuss the crisis. "Without the vaccination of hospitality workers, Africa will be isolated," he said. Africa has essentially had to pause its rollout of COVID-19 vaccines because of supply problems - and only 18 million…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Nigeria expects nearly 8 million vaccines

COVID-19

CHIJIOKE OHUOCHA NIGERIA expects to receive nearly 8 million additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of August, including from a U.S. government donation, the head of its primary care agency said on Tuesday. Faisal Shuaib, head of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), said Nigeria exhausted its initial supply of nearly 4 million shots last week and aims to resume vaccinations within weeks, when the new doses arrive. Nigeria expects delivery of 3.924 million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca shots from global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX by the end of July or early August, Shuaib said, and an additional…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

South Africa says vaccine rollout, essential healthcare disrupted by unrest

COVID-19

SOUTH Africa's health department has said that violent protests had disrupted the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and essential healthcare services like the collection of chronic medication by tuberculosis, HIV and diabetes patients. The department said in a statement that it was temporarily closing some vaccination sites, adding that anyone with an inoculation scheduled in an area affected by ongoing unrest was advised to defer their vaccination.

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Zimbabwe gets 2 million doses

COVID-19

ZIMBABWE has received 2 million COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinovac, its single largest shipment that it hopes will boost a vaccination campaign that had been slowed by shortages while infections and deaths rise. The southern African nation imposed a dusk to dawn curfew and curbed the movement of people on June 29 in a bid to contain infections, which have since increased by 24% to 60,227. Zimbabwe has only registered vaccines from China, India and Russia and not from Western countries. The three countries have made donations to Zimbabwe. Thursday's delivery took Zimbabwe's total number of vaccines from purchases and…