Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Good morning, good afternoon, bonjour and thank you to all our colleagues, journalists for joining us for this press conference today, where we will focus on the COVID-19 vaccines in the African Region and in Africa.
I am very pleased to be joined in this briefing by two colleagues, two friends and brothers, Mr Mohamed Malick Fall, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa and Mr Thabani Maphosa, Managing Director of Country Programmes with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Africa is facing a second wave in the COVID-19 pandemic with more than 3.3 million cases and 81,000 lives sadly lost. The first epidemic peak in July was surpassed in December and cases are continuing to accelerate at a significantly faster pace. I think we have a combination of factors possibly: fatigue with the measures and then, of course the festive season with its travel and gatherings. This second wave is centered mainly in Southern Africa, but we’ve also seen increases in countries in other sub-regions.
We are also very much aware of the new variant that was discovered in South Africa and circulating in several other countries, and we are following closely the evidence that suggests that it is more transmissible but up to now, it doesn’t seem to be more virulent. It is also very important to know how it might be preventable by vaccines or not.
While it was always important to get access to vaccines, it’s now more important than ever with this picture.
What we are seeing now globally is not what we had hoped for. We first, not me first, is the only way to end the pandemic. Vaccine hoarding by countries will only prolong the ordeal and delay recovery for Africa and also for the whole world. It would be deeply unjust if the most vulnerable Africans were forced to wait for vaccines while lower-risk population subgroups in wealthier countries are made safe.
Only through global solidarity will we end this pandemic. The COVAX Facility – which is co-led by CEPI, Gavi and WHO – is laying the groundwork for equitable access to the vaccines.
In Africa, COVAX is targeting phased delivery of 600 million doses by the end of 2021 and I’m sure we will be hearing more from Thabani about this. This is based on two doses per person and is aimed to cover the initial 20% of the population in African countries.
An initial 30 million doses are expected, and I say this with some caveat, to start arriving in countries by March. These are intended to prioritize healthcare workers and other high priority groups and then expanding to cover additional vulnerable groups.
But in the meantime, we are working very hard on preparing for the delivery and the use of those vaccines that are most suited to our contexts and rolling out strong delivery campaigns.
It’s often been said that acquiring vaccines is not enough. It’s an important first step; getting the vaccines into the arms of people, vaccinating people is extremely important.
We have assessed that regional readiness looking at different areas to deploy the vaccines is currently at about 42%. This is a kind of composite estimate looking at different aspects of being prepared to deliver the vaccines. This is an improvement on the starting point of 33% about two months ago, but we still have quite a lot of work to do to reach the desired benchmark of 80%.
So, we in WHO with our partners in UNICEF and others on ground are working with countries to develop their national delivery plans, to train healthcare workers to strengthen health delivery capacities, to engage communities and to address vaccine hesitancy, and to have a regional regulatory platform to support approval processes. The step of approving the use of the vaccines in each and every country is very important, and we are supporting our Member States to do that collectively. This will speed things up.
At the global level, WHO is pushing to get data from vaccine manufacturers so that we can issue emergency use listings to guide national regulatory approvals.
While the COVID-19 vaccines are a game changer, it will take at least until the end of this year, and possibly longer, to roll them out widely for African populations and communities. So, it is very important that we continue to live the COVID-19 new normal.
Everyone needs to continue with the personal preventive actions – wearing masks, physical distancing and hand hygiene, along with sustained, strong public health capacities to find, test, isolate and care for cases, and to trace and isolate their contacts. At WHO we will continue to support countries in all these areas.
I look forward to our discussion today and again, thank you so much for having joined us.