Only ‘a trickle’ of Covid-19 vaccines for Africa’s 1.3 billion people

According to the WHO, Africa is facing a severe shortage of vaccines at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across the continent. Five countries are yet to put a single dose into a citizen's arm.

In the global race to vaccinate people against Covid-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack. In fact, it has barely gotten out of the starting blocks. In South Africa, which has the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, are still waiting for their shots.