Pfizer and BioNTech have announced plans for their laboratories to complete the final step of their Covid-19 vaccine production in Cape Town, South Africa, by mid-2022. The facility will primarily supply the African continent, where a scarcity of doses has delayed immunization campaigns. The US and German companies have teamed up with the Biovac Group to deliver up to 100 million doses per year exclusively to the African market. This was revealed in a statement earlier this week detailing the alliance’s first partnership outside Europe and North America.

The serum will be shipped from the European factories of the two laboratories, which will maintain control over the most delicate and crucial step of the process: i.e. the synthesis of messenger RNA. The final bottling stage will then take place in Cape Town. The transfer of technologies and installation of the manufacturing machines will begin immediately, according to a press release.

Morena Makhoana, CEO of Biovac commented positively on the positive development saying: “This is a critical step in ensuring long-term vaccine access,” says the cooperation, which “would enable larger distribution of doses to people in hard-to-reach regions, particularly on the African continent.”

In the face of the pandemic, geographical inequalities persist, with wealthier countries, on one hand, launching vaccination campaigns all across the world, while the poorest countries lag behind. Africa has received 1.6 percent of all doses administered worldwide, according to AFP estimates, accounting for 17 percent of the world’s population. John Nkengasong, director of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC),  told AFP that “This is great and good news.”  In the fight against the pandemic, “every action counts,” he added.

According to the World Health Organization, only 2% of Africans, or 16 million individuals, are fully immunized. A South African manufacturer is presently packaging another Covid-19 vaccine, Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Janssen. The number of Covid-19 cases and deaths is quickly growing as Africa faces the third wave of infections. According to the World Health Organization, the number of deaths recorded in the preceding week increased by more than 40% over the previous week (WHO).

More and more countries are seeing new and quicker spreading variants, such as the highly transmissible Delta form.
High deaths rate related to the virus is currently being reported in countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.