■ Africa secured nearly 300 million COVID vaccine doses, A health official said.

NAIROBI, Kenya — The African Union has secured close to 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in the largest such agreement yet for Africa, an official said Tuesday.

Nicaise Ndembi, senior science adviser for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview that the current AU chair, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, is expected to announce the news Wednesday.

The 300 million doses are being secured independently of the global COVAX effort aimed at distributing

COVID-19 vaccines to lower-income countries, Ndembi said.

“We have reached the final stage of our deals,” he said, referring questions about who will be providing the vaccines and at what cost to the upcoming announcement.

While richer countries have been urged to donate any excess COVID-19 vaccine doses to countries in need, Ndembi said that “the Africa CDC is not going to table to beg for vaccines. We’re going to the table to buy. … All these doses I mentioned have been procured and being paid for.”

The news comes as coronavirus infections spike again in parts of Africa, especially South Africa, where a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus makes up most of the new cases. The continent over the weekend surpassed 3 million confirmed cases, with more than 1.2 million in South Africa.

“We plan to have these by the end of the first quarter” of 2021, Ndembi said of the nearly 300 million doses, which will be allocated on the continental platform the AU set up last year to help Africa’s 54 countries pool their purchasing power.

“We’re expecting 600 million doses from the COVAX facility,” he said, but African officials are still waiting on the details, so “we’re happy we have alternative solutions.”