First shipment of vaccines from the Covax initiative upon arrival in Accra, Ghana, on February 24.Francis Kokoroko / AP
The Covax vaccination initiative, which aims to distribute some 2 billion covid-19 vaccines among low- and middle-income countries, began on Wednesday with the arrival in Ghana of the first 600,000 doses distributed worldwide.
"Finally!", Wrote on his Twitter account the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, "it is a day to celebrate, but it is only a first step," he added.
The doses, from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, were received at the foot of the runway at Accra airport by a delegation from the Ghanaian government.
While criticism of rich countries for monopolizing the production of covid-19 vaccines multiplies around the world, the Covax program, a public-private alliance promoted by the WHO and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance that has marked the The goal of reaching 20% of the population of the 200 countries that have signed up this year is just beginning to work.
The first doses were sent by Unicef, which also participates in the initiative, on a plane that took off from Bombay, made a stopover in Dubai and landed at 7.40 on Wednesday in Accra, according to a joint statement from these organizations.
At last!
This morning the first doses of # COVID19 vaccines shipped by the COVAX facility arrived in #Ghana.
Congratulations to all partners including @gavi, @CEPIvaccines & @UNICEF.
A day to celebrate, but it's just the first step.
45 days left for #VaccinEquity https://t.co/3TjuJiMzj0
- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) February 24, 2021
"There is still a lot of work to do together with governments and manufacturers to achieve the goal that health workers and the elderly are already beginning to be vaccinated in all countries in the first hundred days of 2021," Ghebreyesus remarked in an attempt to remember the uneven access to vaccines in the world.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has assured that this first step of the largest vaccine distribution operation in history "symbolizes the moment when long days and nights of work finally achieve concrete results."
For his part, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, also cited in the WHO note, recalled that "no one will be safe until everyone is there."
While vaccination is progressively spreading through the more developed countries, the African continent is only now beginning to immunize its population.
This Tuesday was the starting gun in Senegal, with 200,000 doses bought from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, and before they gave it in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Guinea, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea and the small islands of Mauritius and Seychelles.
The high price of vaccines, especially for the poorest nations, and the difficulties in accessing sufficient doses mark the backwardness of this continent.
To give a boost, the African Union achieved a plus of 270 million doses, but the African delegation of the WHO has already admitted that it will be impossible to reach 60% of the population this year, a percentage estimated for group immunity.
The European Union hopes to have vaccinated 70% of its inhabitants during the summer.
Hence the importance of the Covax initiative, although the outlook is worrying.
According to Ghebreyesus himself, of the more than 210 million vaccines distributed in the world, half are found in only two countries and 80% in ten nations.
In the opinion of the director general of the WHO, some 19,000 million euros more are still needed, as well as an acceleration in the production of vaccines, so that Covax can complete its objectives.
However, this will not be possible if the rich countries continue to hoard.
This Monday the director general of the WHO assured at a press conference that “if we cannot buy, the money is useless.
Some industrialized countries are buying more doses and consequently the contracts with Covax are being affected ”.
"This is the hypocrisy and double standards that we have always denounced," Rwandan President Paul Kagame said in response to the WHO director general.
Other voices, such as that of the South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa or the Senegalese head of state, Macky Sall, have also been raised to warn of the risks of leaving the poorest countries behind.
"Africa expects its traditional allies that vaccines are shared," Sall said.
In this sense, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a proposal last Friday for the donation, by Europe and the United States, of 5% of their vaccine reserves for health personnel in Africa.
Ghana, the first country to receive its doses of this initiative and which plans to begin its immunization campaign on March 2, is a good example of the evolution of the pandemic in Africa. With about 30 million inhabitants, it has registered about 80,000 cases and less than 600 deaths since the appearance of the virus a year ago, figures much lower than those experienced in Europe or the United States. Africa, with 1,300 million inhabitants, has accounted for some 100,000 deaths in these twelve months, just over 3% worldwide. However, the virus has circulated with intensity, especially in the second wave that reached its maximum peak in late January, and the emergence of the South African and British variants caused an increase in mortality in recent months.