Failing African vaccine drive creates new risk

A multibillion-dollar effort to vaccinate Africa against Covid-19 has fallen ‘‘scandalously’’ short of its targets, experts say, leaving more than 90 per cent of the continent’s population unprotected and increasing the risk of new variants emerging.

The Covax scheme, which is run by groups including the World Health Organisation (WHO), had aimed to supply two billion jabs by the end of this year, with a focus on poorer countries. It has delivered only about 555 million.

Supply shortfalls are the main reason why 34 out of 54 African countries have vaccinated less than 10 per cent of their populations. Across the continent, coverage stands at barely 7 per cent.

Covax insiders say vaccine supplies have improved in recent weeks but warn that poor infrastructure, vaccine hesitancy and a shortage of healthcare workers are limiting the delivery.

Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said a failure to vaccinate poorer countries posed a danger to the affluent West, including increasing the risk of new variants evolving.

Covax was created in April last year. The effort to vaccinate Africa, which has a population of 1.2 billion, has been beset by a shortage of doses, caused in part by richer nations securing the lion’s share of limited early supplies.

Where supplies are available, there appear to be bottlenecks, which insiders say are explained by weak infrastructure, shortages of healthcare workers, and vaccine hesitancy.

Reuters reported last week that South Africa has asked two vaccine suppliers to delay the delivery of doses because it had too many in stock. Namibia has said that more than 268,000 doses may have to be destroyed due to slow uptake.

David Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a former WHO official, said several factors had fed into slow immunisation rates. ‘‘Some countries . . . when comparing mortality from Covid to mortality from malaria and other diseases, they feel that those other diseases are a greater priority.’’

He added that anti-vaccine misinformation was common, with surveys suggesting that half of people in some areas believed that the Covid-19 threat was a planned event by foreign actors.

The US yesterday recorded its first confirmed case of the omicron variant – in a vaccinated traveller who returned to California after a trip to South Africa – as scientists around the world race to establish whether the new, mutant version of the coronavirus is more dangerous than previous ones.

At least 23 other countries have reported omicron infections since South African authorities first identified the variant a week ago.

Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also reported omicron infections, the first known cases in West Africa and the Persian Gulf region.

– The Times, AP