More African countries are, starting this week, set to receive Covid-19 vaccines from the Covax initiative, reports indicate. According to BBC, a total of 24 countries have been approved to receive the vaccines, with Nigeria and Kenya expecting their first bunch of doses on Tuesday, March 2. This was confirmed by Kenyan Health Minister, Mutahi Kagwe, who cited that the country will get 1.25 million doses of the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine. Like Rwanda, Kagwe noted that priority of vaccinations will be given to front-line health workers and the elderly. Nigeria is set to receive 3.92 million vaccine doses, becoming the third West-African country to benefit from the facility. The country expects to receive a total of 16 million doses from Covax in the next few months. Congratulations Cote dIvoire🇨🇮 for launching its #COVID19 vaccination campaign. Another historic moment for Africa! 504,000 vaccine doses were delivered to Abidjan through #COVAX. Frontline health workers & essential staff being among the first to receive the vaccine. pic.twitter.com/WkIruAwvpW — WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) March 1, 2021 Last week, Côte dIvoire became the second country, after Ghana to roll out Covid-19 vaccines under the Covax initiative. The global initiative aims at accelerating fair and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines for every country. Information from the Ministry of Health indicates that Rwanda has placed its order for over 1 million doses from the facility. Besides Covax, reports indicate that orders for the vaccine doses were made from different manufacturers. On February 24, Rwanda kicked off the national vaccination programme for Covid-19, starting with health care staff who are considered to be among the high-risk groups. As it stands a total of 18,850 coronavirus cases have been recorded in the country, with 261 patients losing their lives to the virus.
