44% OF GLOBAL POPULATION VACCINATED AGAINST COVID-19, EU COMMISSION CHIEF SAYS

Mon 06 December 2021:

The coronavirus vaccination rate worldwide has reached 44%, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday.

“At this point, 44% of the world population is vaccinated,” von der Leyen said in a video message, stressing that the European Union has been the world’s biggest donor of COVID-19 vaccines, having shared 350 million doses.

She pledged to boost vaccine sharing worldwide, particularly in Africa, where vaccination rates are lower than in other parts of the world.

According to von der Leyen, the EU’s vaccination target is at least 70% of the world population by mid-2022.

Vaccine discrimination risks leaving Africa behind

Africa has little chance of overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic unless 70% of its population is vaccinated by end-2022, yet “extreme vaccine discrimination” is leaving the continent behind, a report published on Monday said.

The discovery of the Omicron variant in southern Africa has heightened claims that low inoculation rates can encourage viral mutations, which can then spread to countries where rates are much higher.

Yet only five of Africa’s 54 countries are on track to reach a World Health Organisation target of fully vaccinating 40% of the population by end-2021, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation said in a report on Covid-19 in Africa.

Monday’s report said the pandemic had exposed the weakness of African civil registration capacities, with just 10% of African deaths officially registered. Weak systems raised the possibility that vaccination rates were even lower than official statistics showed.

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