The first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 shots to be dispatched to Africa under the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme are due to arrive in Rwanda on Wednesday.
The batch of nearly 103 000 doses will arrive in Kigali as efforts to inoculate the world’s poorest nations accelerate.
It comes hours after a flight carrying 240 000 doses AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India – also landed in Rwanda.
The country has recorded over 19 000 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 265 COVID-19-related deaths.
The video below is reporting on the COVAX vaccine rollout in the fight against the pandemic:
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX delivered its first COVID-19 shots on February 24, as the race to get doses to the world’s poorest people and tame the pandemic accelerates.
Almost a year after the WHO first described the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic, a flight carrying 600 000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India landed in Ghana’s capital Accra.
Local representatives of the WHO and the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF described the vaccines’ “momentous” arrival as a critical step in bringing the pandemic to an end.
In the video below, Ghana receives COVAX COVID-19 vaccine:
