South Africa among first African countries to receive COVID-19 vaccine

The South African government has launched a platform that will eventually allow everyone in South Africa to register for the COVID-19 vaccine after the first doses arrived on Monday, said Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's president, who hailed the arrival of the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

"The arrival of these vaccines contains the promise that we can turn the tide on this disease that has caused so much devastation and hardship in our country and across the world," Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.

South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 infections and deaths in Africa, with more than 1.4 million cases and over 44,000 deaths to date. The country is the fifth African nation to roll out vaccinations, after Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles and Guinea.

According to official reports, Morocco bought two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 500,000 doses China's Sinopharm vaccine and started its vaccination campaign this week. Egypt, on the other hand, began its rollout on Sunday, starting with doctors and nurses receiving the Sinopharm jab. The Egyptian government said it has reserved more than 100 million doses from different providers.

In a recent webinar on the Africa COVID-19 vaccine financing and deployment strategy convened by Ramaphosa, who is the current chairman to the African Union, it was revealed that the COVID-19 African Vaccine Task Team has managed to secure a provisional 270 million doses for African countries and has received offers of an additional 400 million vaccine doses.

Ramaphosa said the African Export-Import Bank has been instrumental in working with African task team and the COVAX, an international initiative aimed at ensuring equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines, in organizing an advanced procurement facility of $2 billion to enable African countries to engage suppliers directly.

The facility will provide 27 percent of vaccines for the continent, Ramaphosa said. "Choosing the pooled procurement route instead of only bilateral acquisition will enable African countries to access the life-saving vaccines more speedily," he said.

According to John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the continent's goal is to ensure a fast rollout of the vaccination program. However, the biggest hurdle in Africa, he said, is to finance the vaccines and the logistics of vaccinating on a large scale.

"All African countries have the capacity to implement vaccination campaigns. However, they will have to meet four conditions, which are an increase in vaccine storage capacity, training enough health workers, setting up a database for monitoring, and having sufficient funding. Most countries are in the midst of preparations, and the Africa-CDC has already developed immunization strategies," Nkengasong said on Monday as the Africa CDC marked its fourth anniversary.

Africa currently relies on several mechanisms. COVAX, which is coordinated by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Gavi vaccine alliance, aims to vaccinate 20 percent of the most vulnerable people in Africa, Nkengasong said.

"However, our goal is to vaccinate at least 60 percent of Africa's population in order to achieve herd immunity and slow the spread of COVID-19," he added.