Of the 500 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine that the EU has pledged to deliver to low- and middle-income countries by mid-2022, 99.6 million have been delivered or will be delivered this week to African countries, the European Commission and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, which is chaired by former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, announced on Monday 22 November.
These are, for the first time, doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was initially thought to require only one injection, but for which the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Monday it was assessing a request from the manufacturer Janssen for a booster dose to be given two months after the first injection.
These doses are delivered through the Covax Facility, the instrument for equitable and universal access to vaccines, for which MEP Chrysoula Zacharopoulou (Renew Europe, France) co-chairs the shareholders council. For this delivery, the contract was negotiated by Belgium with the support of the European Commission.
The products arrived in Niger (496,800). The other recipients are: Guinea Conakry (496,800), Mauritania (144,000), Central African Republic (302,400), Djibouti (50,400), Nigeria (2,764,800), Togo (633,600) and Republic of Congo (230,400).
The donations come from 17 EU Member States (Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden) as well as Iceland and Norway.
Until now, the EU has mainly supplied AstraZeneca vaccines via Covax.
EU countries have pledged to share more than 300 million doses with low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021, and the European Commission pledged to donate an additional 200 million doses by mid-2022.
Dr Zacharopoulou has been tasked with coordinating the acceleration of EU Member States’ donation sharing through Covax, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell announced on 19 November. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)