Africa citizens wary of COVID vaccines due to continuous misinformation, says AU

In the latest development, the African Union (AU) has stated that the continuous misinformation regarding COVID vaccinations was contributing to several individuals throughout Africa becoming wary in being inoculated. As per Xinhua, the chief Secretariat of the AU's Economic, Social, and Cultural Council William Carew commented that just 3.6% of Africa's population had been fully immunised against COVID. Carew further argued that Africans have been vaccinated in order to attain herd immunity. 

Carew made these statements at a recent conference on COVID vaccine capacity development and sensitisation, which was part of the Council's continental sensitisation initiative designed to boost the availability and usage of COVID vaccinations in order to establish a protective immune system within the African population. 

Africa vaccine hesitancy

Given the virus's speed of transmission and capacity to evolve, Carew urged Africans to follow public health experts' recommendations about vaccines which will help to stop the virus from spreading. He even appealed to the representatives of African Civil Society Organizations who were attending the conference by saying that to learn more about vaccinations and to provide assistance by educating the African population in their respective areas in which they operate.  

WHO on COVID vaccination in Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced last week that the COVAX facility has been forced to reduce the scheduled COVID vaccine shipments to Africa to about 150 million doses this year, leaving the continent nearly 500 million doses deficit by the year-end goal of full vaccination of 40% of the global population. COVAX will only be able to send 470 million doses to Africa this year after the revised reduction of shipment. This amount of vaccination doses will only be adequate to vaccinate 17% of the African population, which is far less than the 40% objective. 

As per the WHO, the scheduled deliveries in the African nations will come through COVAX which is a multilateral program that has intended at ensuring worldwide accessibility of the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccination. WHO further stated that an extra 470 million doses are required to meet the end-year objective.  

According to the current data obtained from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the total number of confirmed COVID-19 instances in Africa has reached over 8,166,634 as of Tuesday midday, with 206,740 deaths from the pandemic.  

(Image: AP)