By Camillus Eboh and Omar Mohammed
ABUJA / NAIROBI (Reuters) – Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda began vaccinating health workers and vulnerable citizens against COVID-19 on Friday as Africa, the world’s poorest continent and home to 1.3 billion people, intensified its vaccination campaign.
While some affluent Western countries have already vaccinated millions of people, many African states have struggled to get doses and have not yet delivered a single shot.
But the global COVAX facility sharing the vaccine, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the GAVI vaccine alliance and others, has begun to bear fruit in countries from Ghana to Rwanda.
“It means I will die whenever God wants, because the coronavirus cannot kill me now,” 90-year-old Stephanie Nyirankuriza leaned on a cane after shooting at a health center just east of the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Rwanda is the first nation in Africa to use the pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s doses that require ultra-cold storage.
President Paul Kagame’s government, which prides itself on technological prowess but is often criticized as authoritarian, has installed special infrastructure to keep the Pfizer vaccine at the required -70C.
The Kagame government, which received both Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots via the COVAX facility, plans to vaccinate up to 30% of the 12 million people in Rwanda by the end of the year.
Nigeria, the largest population country in Africa and its largest economy, vaccinated health workers on Friday with AstraZeneca shots, the start of a campaign aimed at vaccinating 80 million of the 200 million inhabitants this year.
“I want everyone to be vaccinated,” Ngong Cyprian, a 42-year-old doctor, told Reuters in the capital Abuja when he was the first in Nigeria to receive his shot, while officials clapped and cheered.
President Muhammadu Buhari will be vaccinated on Saturday in an effort to boost public confidence in the shots.
Nigeria received 3.92 million doses of AstraZeneca under COVAX on Tuesday, but the institution is only aimed at covering 20% of the population in the countries that help it. Nigeria also expects at least 40 million doses from the African Union, as well as 100,000 donations of Covishield vaccine in India.
‘THE BOX IS SAFE’
Applause welcomed the first vaccinations in Kenya on Friday after receiving its first million doses via COVAX this week.
“I feel great,” said Patrick Amoth, director general of the health ministry, after getting his chance. “The vaccine is safe.”
Kenya, which wants to revive its tourism-dependent economy, the largest in East Africa, plans to vaccinate 1.25 million people by June and another 9.6 million in the next phase, with a few more vaccinations within weeks are expected.
“This could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic,” said Susan Mochache, a senior official at the health ministry.
Neighboring Uganda received its first batch of 864,000 AstraZeneca doses via COVAX on Friday and plans to begin vaccinations on March 10.
As of Thursday, Africa as a whole has reported nearly 4 million infections and 104,000 deaths – still a relatively small number compared to other continents, with higher national mortality rates in the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and Britain.
South Africa has recorded by far the most COVID-19 infections and deaths on the African continent, with 1.5 million cases and more than 50,000 deaths so far.
A senior health official said on Friday that South Africa was negotiating with an African Union (AU) platform to buy vaccines for at least 10 million of its people.
The country has so far allocated 12 million doses developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in an AU vaccine plan, but it was unclear how many vaccines he would want to buy after discontinuing the plan to use the AstraZeneca shot . ($ 1 = 109,5500 Kenyan shillings)
(Additional reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana in Kigali, Elias Biryabirema in Kampala and Alexander Winning in Johannesburg; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Alex Richardson)