Africa, COVAX Urge International Community to Improve Donations of COVID-19 Vaccines

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th November, 2021) The African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and COVAX on Monday urged international community to improve the quality of their donations of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa amid the emergence of the new Omicron strain.

So far, AVAT and COVAX together have supplied over 90 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the African continent, but the majority of these donations have been ad hoc. According to the statement, this factor seriously complicated the process of planning vaccination campaigns.

"Donations to COVAX, AVAT, and African countries must be made in a way that allows countries to effectively mobilize domestic resources in support of rollout and enables long-term planning to increase coverage rates. We call on the international community, particularly donors and manufacturers, to commit to this effort by adhering to the following standards, beginning from 1 January 2022," the organizations said in a joint statement.

The new set of standards should include high quantity and predictability of the supplies, as well as providing essential ancillaries. In addition, the shelf life of the donated doses should be at least 10 weeks after their arrival in a country. The donors should also notify the availability of the doses not less than 4 weeks before their arrival. Moreover, all stakeholders should provide prompt response on critical information, according to the statement.

On Friday, the World Health Organization identified the new strain initially found in South Africa as one of concern, since it may be more transmissible and dangerous. Cases of the new variant have already been confirmed in multiple countries, including Israel, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic.