ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has secured nine million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by April and hopes to vaccinate at least a fifth of its 110 million people by the end of the year, Health Minister said on Tuesday.
“So far, almost nine million doses have been given by April,” Lia Tadesse said.
“Within this year, we want to make sure we get at least 20% of the population,” she told Reuters.
Ethiopia was open to possible vaccine donations, Lia added, saying the country does not obtain doses independently, but only through the COVAX facility.
COVAX is led by the GAVI Alliance, which provides vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
African countries are trying to get COVID-19 vaccine supplies for their 1.3 billion people, although rich countries are ahead of the rest of the world with mass vaccination campaigns. Only a handful of nations on the continent have begun administering vaccines.
Lia did not specify on Tuesday which vaccines Ethiopia will receive from COVAX.
“We are not getting any specific vaccine, but we are getting it based on the availability of the COVAX facility,” she told Reuters.
The health ministry said on Tuesday that the country needed 13 billion Ethiopian beers ($ 328 million) for vaccines and related expenses, the state-run Ethiopian News Agency said, which would be covered by government and international donations.
More than 142,000 Ethiopians tested positive for COVID-19, with more than 2,100 dying from the disease, according to WHO data.
Earlier this month, COVAX said it had allocated at least 330 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, and it aims to deliver these and many millions more in the first half of 2021.
These include 240 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India, an additional 96 million doses from the same survey made by AstraZeneca, plus 1.2 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech see COVID-19 vaccine.
Lai told Reuters Ethiopia is awaiting more information on concerns that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine may not be as effective at significantly reducing the risk of mild or moderate COVID-19 as the 501Y.V2 variant.
“There are concerns that the AstraZeneca may not work. It is not being declared that it is not working,” she said. “The information we have is that it is being investigated by the relevant authorities within the COVAX facility, the research institutions and the WHO, so we will wait for that.”
($ 1 = 39.58 birr)
(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; written by Omar Mohammed, edited by Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)