AstraZeneca

While many countries' fight against the coronavirus pandemic is already being challenged by vaccine shortages and weak healthcare infrastructure, doubts about the available vaccines in Africa are also slowing down inoculation, which serves as another obstacle to reducing the number of new cases. When Edith Serem received her COVID-19 vaccination last month at a Nairobi hospital where she works as a doctor, nurses jokingly warned that she could start speaking a foreign language. Serem said some…

The Democratic Republic of Congo has begun distributing hundreds of thousands of expired COVID-19 vaccines to other African countries because it will not be able to administer all doses before they expire at the end of June, its health minister said on Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, a plane from Angola picked up almost half a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which had been delivered to Congo through the COVAX vaccine dispatch facility on March 2. Congo delayed launch after several European countries…

The African Union (AU) has reached an agreement with Johnson & Johnson to supply the continent with up to 400 million single doses of its COVID-19 vaccine starting in the third quarter of this year, the manufacturer said on Monday. The virus has killed nearly 121,000 people across Africa and infected 4.18 million. The J&J unit Janssen Pharmaceutica NV has entered into a deal with the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) to deliver 220 million doses of its single-dose shot. AVAT was able to order an…

Developing countries such as African countries and Brazil announced that they will continue to use the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, despite the fact that the AstraZeneca vaccine has been discontinued in several European countries in the past week. There are not many options for each country when it comes to vaccination for economic reasons. As it stands now, it is either AstraZeneca or nothing for some poorer countries. The vaccine from the English-language pharmaceutical manufacturer is cheaper and…

EU nations resume use of AstraZeneca vaccine after regulatory shootings AMSTERDAM / LONDON - Germany, France and other European countries announced plans to resume use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday after EU and UK regulators stepped up to build confidence in the shot, saying the benefits outweigh the risks. Reports of rare cerebral thrombosis have prompted more than a…