African Union obtains 300 million Covid-19 vaccines for the entire continent

The African Union (AU) has secured over 300 million Covid 19 vaccine doses for the whole of the continent.  

The vaccine doses are being secured independently of the global Covax effort aimed at distributing COVID-19 vaccines to lower-income countries. Earlier this week, President Ramaphosa said the continent as a whole would need 1.5 billion doses to immunize the target of 60 percent of its population. 

Countries within the continent have started negotiating with pharmaceuticals to get large purchase agreements. South Africa and Nigerian have announced they will get the first set of doses delivered before the end of January.   

However, there have been over three million confirmed cases of the virus within the continent and more than 73,500 deaths, according to the Africa CDC. That figure is a portion of the global confirmed cases which is 91 million. Sierra Leone as of today has registered a total of 2,887 cases, with 2,013 recoveries and 77 deaths.