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By MacDonald Dzirutwe and Alexander Winning
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Mass vaccination against
COVID-19 is unlikely to start in Africa until midway through
next year and keeping vaccines cold could be a big challenge,
the continent's disease control group said on Thursday.
Some European countries expect to start rolling out
vaccination campaigns as early as January.
But health campaigners are worried that Africa will find
itself near the back of the queue for COVID-19 vaccines after
wealthier nations signed a raft of bilateral vaccine supply
deals with pharmaceutical companies.
"We are very concerned as a continent that we will not have
access to vaccines in a timely fashion," said John Nkengasong,
director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention, an African Union agency.
"It will not be, in my view, up to (the) middle of next year
before we truly start to get vaccination into Africa," he told a
news conference.
He said there were also logistical problems to overcome in
Africa, a hot continent with perennial challenges supplying
electricity.
The continent of 1.3 billion people has recorded more than
2.1 million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, according
to a Reuters tally, though it has had a lower death rate than
other continents.
It has recorded only 50,000 deaths, because African
countries have imposed strict lockdowns and have generally
younger populations.
Many African nations have expressed interest in taking part
in the COVAX global vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the
World Health Organization. It is expected - but not certain -
that less wealthy countries will receive vaccines at low or no
cost via COVAX next year.
Nkengasong said his agency's aim was for 60% of the
continent's population to be vaccinated eventually.
He said so far the AstraZeneca vaccine candidate
offered "the best possibility for distribution in Africa"
because its temperature storage conditions were less strict than
others. Shots being trialled by Pfizer and Moderna
have to be kept at extremely cold temperatures.
South Africa is seeking to buy vaccines for 10% of its 58
million population via COVAX, Reuters reported earlier this
week.
(Editing by Tim Cocks and Timothy Heritage)
