Africa Needs $1.29 Billion to Fund Rollout of Covid Shots, WHO Says

(Bloomberg) --

Africa is short of at least $1.29 billion to fund the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization said, citing data from 40 of the continent's 54 countries.

Only 11% of the continent's 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated and the weekly pace of vaccination needs to rise sixfold to hit a target of having 70% of the population inoculated by the middle of this year, the WHO said in a statement on Thursday. Currently six million Africans are being vaccinated weekly.

While the number of vaccines received in January doubled from six months ago the challenge is now getting those shots into arms, the WHO said.

“A dependable pipeline must go hand in hand with operational funding to move doses out of depots and into people's arms,” Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's regional director for Africa, said in the statement.

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