On Thursday, Africa Centres for Disease Control's top chief Dr John N. Nkengasong accused Serum Institute of India of letting his country down and pulling out of talks to supply COVID-19 vaccines, creating distrust that affected demand, reported Reuters.
Nkengasong also refuted SII's recent comments that uptake of its COVID-19 shots slowed because of low demand from Africa and vaccine hesitancy, saying the real problem was that Serum had acted unprofessionally.
According to Africa CDC, Serum had engaged in discussions last year with the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), and that at one point he had believed a deal was very close, but then Serum abruptly ended the talks.
"Serum just decided to act in a very unprofessional manner and stop communicating with AVATT team, so that created a situation where we found ourselves extremely unhappy ... and then engaged with Johnson & Johnson," Nkengasong, CDC director told Reuters.
COVID-19 in Africa
Reports suggest that Africa remains the world's least vaccinated continent against Covid-19, with less than 8% of the continent's population fully jabbed.
Only six African countries have met the global target of vaccinating 40% of their populations against Covid-19 by the end of this year, and "this is simply dangerous untenable," a WHO immunization official, Richard Mihigo, told reporters on Thursday.
With 8.6 million infections and nearly 223,000 lives lost across the African continent, the impact of COVID-19 has already been severe, leading to the economic and social disruption that has threatened more lives and livelihoods, putting years of human development progress in danger.
