* Africa lagging other continents in vaccination rollouts
* COVAX facility helping countries to secure shots
* Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda start inoculating top priority
groups
* Uganda receives first shipment of vaccines under COVAX
* South Africa negotiating to buy more vaccines
By Camillus Eboh and Omar Mohammed
ABUJA/NAIROBI, March 5 (Reuters) - Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda
started inoculating frontline healthcare workers and vulnerable
citizens against COVID-19 on Friday as Africa, the world's
poorest continent and home to 1.3 billion people, stepped up its
vaccination campaigns.
While some wealthy Western nations have already inoculated
millions of people, many African states have struggled to secure
doses and have yet to administer a single shot.
But the global vaccine-sharing COVAX facility, co-led by the
World Health Organization (WHO), the GAVI vaccine alliance and
others, has begun to bear fruit in nations from Ghana to Rwanda.
"This means that I will die when God wants because the
coronavirus cannot kill me now," 90-year-old Stephanie
Nyirankuriza said, leaning on a walking stick after her shot at
a health centre just east of the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Rwanda is the first nation in Africa to use pharmaceutical
company Pfizer's doses that require ultra-cold storage.
President Paul Kagame's government, which prides itself on
technological prowess but is often criticised as authoritarian,
has installed special infrastructure to keep the Pfizer vaccine
at the required -70C. The Kagame government, which has received both Pfizer and
AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) shots via the COVAX facility, plans to vaccinate up
to 30% of Rwanda's 12 million people by the end of the year.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and its biggest
economy, inoculated healthcare workers with AstraZeneca shots on
Friday, the start of a campaign that aims to vaccinate 80
million of the 200 million-strong population this year.
"I want everybody to be vaccinated," Ngong Cyprian, a
42-year-old doctor, told Reuters in the capital Abuja as he
became the first in Nigeria to receive his shot, while officials
clapped and cheered.
President Muhammadu Buhari will be vaccinated on Saturday in
an effort to increase public confidence in the shots.
Nigeria took delivery of 3.92 million AstraZeneca doses on
Tuesday under COVAX, but the facility only aims to cover 20% of
the population in the countries it helps. Nigeria is also
expecting at least 40 million doses from the African Union as
well as 100,000 donated doses of India's Covishield vaccine.
'THE VACCINE IS SAFE'
Applause greeted the first vaccinations in Kenya on Friday
after it received its first million doses this week via COVAX.
"I am feeling great," said Patrick Amoth, director general
at the ministry of health, after getting his shot. "The vaccine
is safe."
Kenya, which is keen to revive its tourism-dependent
economy, East Africa's largest, plans to vaccinate 1.25 million
people by June and another 9.6 million in the next phase, with
more vaccines expected within weeks.
"This may mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic,"
said Susan Mochache, a senior official at the health ministry.
Neighbouring Uganda took delivery on Friday of its first
batch of 864,000 AstraZeneca doses via COVAX and aims to begin
inoculations on March 10.
As of Thursday, Africa as a whole had reported nearly 4
million infections and 104,000 deaths - still a relatively small
toll compared to other continents, with higher national death
counts in the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and Britain.
South Africa has recorded by far the most COVID-19
infections and deaths on the African continent, with 1.5 million
cases and more than 50,000 fatalities to date.
On Friday, a senior health official said South Africa was
negotiating with an African Union (AU) platform to buy vaccines
for at least 10 million of its people.
The country was provisionally allocated 12 million doses
developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in an AU
vaccine plan, but it was unclear how many vaccines it would seek
to buy after it halted plans to use the AstraZeneca shot.
($1 = 109.5500 Kenyan shillings)