JOHANNESBURG – South Africa received its first batch of 325,260 Pfizer vaccine doses late on Sunday night, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced. This follows lengthy negotiations between the South African government and Pfizer, during which the company made “difficult and sometimes unreasonable” terms including at one stage that the country put up sovereign assets as […] Continue reading ->
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, has secured half a billion doses of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine for the COVAX global vaccine facility in a landmark agreement that will deepen vaccination coverage in poor countries around the world, Gavi said on Monday. Meanwhile, Sweden announced that it will donate one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the […] Continue reading ->
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “silent pandemic” of drug resistance to mutated bacteria, viruses and parasites is gaining ground and requires major government investments in antibiotic research and development (R&D), a group of experts has warned. “People are dying across the world from drug-resistant infections. This is a problem of today, and […] Continue reading ->
Several African countries struggling with vaccine rollout programs are forced to donate COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries before the lifesaving drugs expire, the Africa CDC revealed on Thursday. Details of the “donations” are sketchy, but Africa CDC director John Nkengasong, during a media briefing, disclosed how one African country, the Democratic Republic of Congo […] Continue reading ->
While aid is rushed to India, WHO’s Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has called out rich countries to donate more “desperately needed” coronavirus vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean – in the face of persistently high levels of COVID-19 infections in that region, which has consistently been one of the hardest hit by the […] Continue reading ->