Pfizer-BioNTech to start producing Covid-19 vaccines in South Africa in 2022

When fully operational, the companies said annual vaccine production would exceed 100 million doses, to be distributed exclusively within African countries.

In a statement, the companies said they signed a letter of intent with the Biovac Institute in Cape Town to transfer technology, install equipment, and develop manufacturing capability. The raw material for the vaccines will be transported from Europe and the first doses will be produced in 2022.

Vaccination rates across Africa remain extremely low, with just over 20 million full vaccine doses administered to a population of over 1.3 billion, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which says only 1.5% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Several countries including Mali, Niger and Ethiopia have hardly administered any doses per 100 people.
A Kenyan health worker receives a dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in Nairobi on March 5, 2021.
The vaccine rollout on the continent has been plagued by a shortage of doses, much of which are supplied by the global vaccine distribution initiative COVAX. Many of those doses were scheduled to come from the Serum Institute of India, but exports were suspended amid India’s disastrous second wave of Covid-19 and will not restart until the end of the year.
My uncle died of Covid-19 before he could get a vaccine in Kenya, and I got mine in a US drugstore. This is what vaccine inequality looks like
Countries including South Sudan and Kenya have either run out of jabs, or have come close to running out, as cases surge across the continent. Last week, WHO announced that countries in Africa had recorded a 43% week-on-week rise in Covid-19 deaths.
South Africa, where Pfizer/BioNTech will manufacture the much-needed doses, is currently in the throes of a deadly third wave triggered by the Delta variant. The country entered a strict lockdown at the end of June but has seen 63,000 Covid-19 deaths over the course of the pandemic, with current levels of more than 300 deaths per day.
source: cnn.com