Eswatini to benefit from USA’s 500 million doses shipment
MBABANE – Eswatini stands to receive more COVID-19 vaccine doses.
On Wednesday, President of the United States of America (USA) Joe Biden announced an additional 500 million doses to be shipped to poor and middle-income countries.
The pledge to purchase the Pfizer shots brought America’s cumulative planned contribution to 1.1 billion doses, and represented a centerpiece in Biden’s push to get wealthy nations to do more to put a lid on the painful 18-month-old pandemic.
“For every one shot we’ve administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world,” the president said from Washington in a virtual coronavirus summit.
“We need other high-income countries to deliver on their own ambitious vaccine donations and pledges,” said the president.
“It was reported that the president embraced the goal of inoculating 70 per cent of the world’s population within a year, a daunting task given the sluggish pace worldwide, especially in poorer countries.
An estimated 43 per cent of the global population was vaccinated over the last year. However, it has been reported that there were vast disparities in distribution; with some nations stuck at rock bottom with immunisation rates around two per cent.
The US will put extra millions toward administration and delivery of the shots worldwide, the president promised.
He urged other countries to avoid selling vaccines to low-income countries, and offer the doses without political obligations attached.
To combat the challenge, Biden said the US was working with manufacturers to improve vaccine production in other countries. He said America was sending Dollars to boost manufacturing in South Africa, with a goal of pumping out more than 500 million doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus inoculation for Africans.
In or around July, Eswatini benefitted from 304 000 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses donated by the US.
These doses were part of the more than 80 million doses that President Biden announced on May 17.
In a brief interview with this publication yesterday, Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi said Eswatini would be receiving Pfizer vaccine doses through the COVAX Facility, in which the US government was heavily donating.
Nkosi said they were also in discussion with the local US embassy, should there be a need for more doses on top of what the country was in a process of procuring.
She said there were countries much worse off that Eswatini in terms of access to COVID-19 vaccination.
Worth noting is that Eswatini had vaccinated 17.0 per cent of its total population as of Thursday.