BY ABASS SOULEYMAN

The second wave of covid-19 spike in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the fast-spreading new variant detected in South Africa and Nigeria in December, has health and political officials worried across the continent. But help is on the way.

The African Union, A.U., announced last week it is about to receive 270 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The Pan-African organization stated it will make sure the vaccine is distributed equitably. This is the culmination of the effort of an A.U. team that has worked hard to make sure the continent is not left out in the growing world-wide effort to get people vaccinated against the deadly virus.

For a continent with a population of over a billion people, 270 million doses are just a little over a drop in the bucket, as it only constitutes one fifth of the 1.5 billion doses needed to vaccinate about 70% of the continent’s population—the threshold required to achieve herd immunity, according to the officials.

Tyrone Seale, former AU chairman and spokesperson of South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, stated:

“We have held steadfastly to the principle that no country should be left behind. With this in mind, we have not only campaigned vigorously for changes through all the available international forums, but we have taken the additional step to independently secure vaccines using our own limited resources as member states.”

The continent will be receiving the India-manufactured vaccine coming from Pfizer and AstraZeneca. It is unclear when exactly the first doses will arrive. Seale did say that a first batch of 50 million doses will be arrive between April and June, with the rest expected later this year.

Separate from the above plan which is under the umbrella of the African Union, South Africa, the African country with the largest number of cases and death, announced two weeks ago that it was expecting a million doses of the vaccine by the end of this month. The rainbow nation plans to vaccinate 40 million of its citizens—roughly 67% of the population, by the end of this year. South Africa has recorded nearly 1.3 million confirmed cases since the virus was detected in March on the continent. The new, fast-spreading variant was detected in the middle of the holiday season.

But South Africa is the second largest economy of the continent and a member of the G-20 economic group of nations, with a higher access to the market than low-income nations. Which called for a bold action on the part of the continent’s umbrella organization, the A.U., for the weaker economies.

Working with the Afreximbank, the A.U. will guarantee up to $2 billion covid-19 orders from member-states, according to Seale. He mentioned the “close collaboration” between the Pan-African organization and the World Bank to enable the member-states to secure an additional $5 billion to buy the vaccsines, or pay for delivery of the vaccines the World Bank has committed on their behalf.