Covid-19: Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention urges India to lift vaccine export limits
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New Delhi: Africa's top health official said Thursday he wants to believe that India will lift export restrictions on Covid-19 vaccines as soon as possible, warning that "India is not an island" while some African nations still have seen no shots at all.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke as the African continent of 1.3 billion people doesn't know when second doses of key vaccines will arrive and India sees a devastating resurgence in infections. India is a major vaccine producer and a key supplier to the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative aiming to bring shots to some of the world's poorest countries.
"If you finish vaccinating your people before Africa or other parts of the world, you have not done yourself any justice because variants will emerge and undermine your own vaccination efforts," Nkengasong said in a weekly press briefing.
He said the uncertainty around the arrival of second doses puts the African continent in a "very dicey situation." Some countries have already exhausted their initial vaccine doses, including Ghana and Rwanda, he said.
African officials aim to vaccinate some 750 million people across the continent over the next two years. So far, just under 14 million vaccine doses have been administered across the 54 countries.
More than 34 million vaccine doses have been acquired, with 32 countries having received them from Covax.
Africa has confirmed 4.3 million coronavirus infections and has a case fatality rate of 2.7%, above the global average of 2.2%. The past week has seen a 2% decrease in new cases.
Variants of the virus remain a concern. Nkengasong said 19 African countries have reported the variant first detected in Britain, while 18 have reported the variant first detected in South Africa.
Read also: Serum Institute refunds South Africa for 5 lakh undelivered doses of COVID vaccine
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