Another reason, experts said, is that India, with the world’s biggest pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, has halted coronavirus vaccine exports while it tries to inoculate more of its own people.
“Export bans and vaccine hoarding still have a chokehold on the lifeline of vaccine supplies to Africa,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the W.H.O.’s director for Africa, said at the news conference. “As long as wealthy countries lock Covax and the African Union out of the market, Africa will miss its vaccination goals.
Dr. Moeti repeated the W.H.O.’s demand that countries postpone administering booster shots to healthy people until the end of the year, so that more vaccine doses can be supplied to countries that are still struggling to administer initial doses. Yet a growing number of countries are proceeding with plans for booster programs.
Dr. Moeti added that African nations had significantly expanded their delivery capacity, administering 13 million doses last week, more than triple the figures from previous weeks. Even so, at their current pace the countries will not reach the 40 percent vaccination target until next March, she said.