
US to ship nearly 10 million vaccine doses to Nigeria and South Africa
pharmafile | July 28, 2021 | News story | Research and Development |
On Wednesday the US government will ship 4 million vaccine does to Nigeria and 5.66 million doses to South Africa.
This comes as a third wave has caused a rise in infections on the continent.
There’s growing concern as vaccine rates in Africa countries are falling behind more economically advanced economies.
The South Africa shipment is the single largest sent by the United States since it began sending vaccine shots overseas, one of the officials said. The latest shipments bring the total number of US vaccine doses sent to Africa to 16.4 million, as reported in Reuters.
African countries have administered just 60 million vaccine doses to a population of over 1.3 billion.
There is growing concern that the Delta variant, the most dominant strain of the virus, will mean that double-vaccinated people will need booster shots, thus requiring more doses.
One of the White House officials said: “We are working to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people around the world as fast as possible.”
One of the officials said that with this latest shipment, the United States will exceed the 80 million vaccine doses that President Joe Biden had pledged in May to donate to countries around the world.
Biden in June also announced plans to buy and donate 500 million Pfizer vaccine doses to 92 low- and lower middle-income countries and the African Union. These shipments will begin next month.
Lilly Subbotin






