ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has secured nine million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by April and expects to inoculate at least a fifth of its 110 million people by the end of the year, the health minister said on Tuesday.
“For the time being, until April, about nine million doses have been allocated,” said Lia Tadesse.
“This year, we want to make sure we get at least 20% of the population,” she told Reuters.
Ethiopia is open to possible vaccine donations, added Lia, and said that the country is not making any dose purchases independently, but only through the installation of COVAX.
COVAX is co-led by the GAVI alliance that guarantees vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
African countries are trying to obtain supplies of COVID-19 vaccines for their 1.3 billion inhabitants, while wealthy nations in other parts of the world are moving forward with mass immunization campaigns. Only a few nations on the continent have started administering vaccines.
On Tuesday, Lia did not specify which vaccines Ethiopia will receive through COVAX.
“We are not getting any specific vaccine, we are getting it based on the availability of COVAX facilities,” she told Reuters.
The health ministry said on Tuesday that the country will need 13 billion Ethiopian birr ($ 328 million) for vaccines and related expenses, said the Ethiopian state news agency, which will be covered by government and international donations.
More than 142,000 Ethiopians tested positive for COVID-19 with more than 2,100 dying from the disease, according to WHO data.
Earlier this month, COVAX said it had allocated at least 330 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the poorest countries and will aim to distribute them and many millions more in the first half of 2021.
This includes 240 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India, 96 million additional doses of the same injection made by AstraZeneca, plus 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech’S COVID-19 vaccine.
Lai told Reuters that Ethiopia was waiting for more information about concerns that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine may not be as effective in significantly reducing the risk of mild or moderate COVID-19 from the 501Y.V2 variant.
“There is a concern that AstraZeneca may not work. It is not stated that it will not work, ”she said. “The information we have is that it is under investigation by the relevant authorities within the COVAX facility, by research institutions and by WHO, so let’s wait for that.”
($ 1 = 39.58 birr)
(Reporting by the Nairobi newsroom; written by Omar Mohammed, edited by Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)