Africa welcomes COVAX doses, warns of ‘selfishness’

Urgent calls for COVID-19 vaccine fairness rang through African countries on Friday as more welcomed or rolled out doses from the global COVAX initiative, with officials acutely aware their continent needs much more.

”Rich countries should not be so selfish,“Pontiano Kaleebu, head of the Uganda Virus Research Institute, said as his country received its first doses. ”It’s a concern, and everyone is talking about it.”

The East African nation of 45 million people was receiving under 1 million vaccine doses — 864,000. It’s the first batch of a total of 18 million COVAX doses for Uganda, but when all will arrive is not known.

That number is ”not going to do much,“said Monica Musenero, an epidemiologist and presidential adviser, though she added that ”we can advocate for more vaccines, but we should also appreciate what we’ve got.“

The foundation of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife, Leah, on Friday issued a statement saying that ”more must be done, immediately, to ensure lower-income countries have faster access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostic tools and treatments.”