Germany doubles vaccine aid to Africa

Germany will make up to 70 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine available to African countries this year, chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday, more than doubling a previous pledge to donate 30 million.

"Germany will make available not only 30 million doses of vaccines but it will be as much as 70 million doses," Merkel told a news conference after a summit with African leaders on the G20's Compact with Africa initiative.

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said African leaders told the summit "it is not fair that Africa has vaccinated only 2% of their 1.3 billion population and yet the more developed countries in the north have vaccinated up to 60%."

"All of us in that meeting felt that Africa needs to be given the opportunity and the right to produce vaccines," he said at the joint news conference with Merkel.

‘STEP BY STEP’

Merkel said she was confident that there could be a "transfer, step by step, of the technology" to allow production of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa.

Ramaphosa thanked Merkel for championing the G20 Compact with Africa.

Launched in 2017 under Germany's G20 presidency, the Compact promotes private investment in Africa, aiming to ease the poverty which, along with political instability and violence, has encouraged large numbers of Africans to head for Europe.

"She has been a champion of the African continent ... and Africa is going to miss her greatly," Ramaphosa said.

Merkel, in power since 2005, plans to stand down after Germany's federal election on Sept. 26.

URGENCY

A group of global policymakers tasked with responding to the Covid-19 health crisis on Friday urged nations with large vaccine stocks to share them with programmes that distribute them to lower-income counties.

In a joint statement, the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce - which includes the heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank Group, World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) - said fewer than 2% of adults in most low-income countries were vaccinated, compared with almost 50% in high-income countries.

"This crisis of vaccine inequity is driving a dangerous divergence in Covid-19 survival rates and in the global economy," the group said.

It called on the Group of Seven nations - the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom - to "urgently" fulfill their vaccine-sharing pledges, noting that fewer than 10% of pledged doses have been shipped.

The group also urged nations to eliminate export restrictions on Covid-19 vaccines.

THIRD WAVE

A third wave of Covid-19 infections in Africa has stabilised and the continent's slow vaccination drive has picked up pace, the WHO said on Thursday.

Some 248 000 new cases were reported in the past week, down from 282 000 in mid-July, while the number of vaccinations tripled to 13 million, Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's regional director, told an online news conference.

Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion, has experienced a third wave of infections since May, straining health systems in countries from South Africa to Tunisia, Zambia and Senegal, where vaccination rates are far lower than in Europe and North America.

COVAX - the donor scheme co-led by the WHO to purchase vaccines for poorer countries - initially hoped to vaccinate 20% of people in Africa this year, but it has been plagued by delays. The WHO now hopes to vaccinate 10% of people in Africa by the end of September, Moeti said.

"117 million doses are due to arrive in the coming month and up to 34 million additional doses will be needed to reach that target," she said. – Nampa/AFP