eBusiness Weekly
Pfizer and BioNTech’s agreement to have the Biovac Institute manufacture their ground-breaking messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccine in Cape Town is a major breakthrough for the continent.
When the pandemic began, Africa had few vaccine-manufacturing facilities, and the ones that it did have were small and, in many cases, dilapidated.
The most prominent were the Institute Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal and South Africa’s Biovac, which at the time hadn’t actually made any vaccines.
Aside from those, there were some outdated facilities in North Africa.
That’s one of the key reasons why Africa is the least-vaccinated continent, with just 1,3 percent of its 1,2 billion people fully inoculated to date, compared with about half for the US and UK.
The countries where vaccines were made looked after their own needs first.
Now China’s Sinovac doses are being made in Egypt and South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare is manufacturing at a rate of as many as 300 million Covid-19 shots a year for Johnson & Johnson.
But there were no concrete plans in Africa, until now, to make doses that use mRNA technology, which is seen as more effective against the coronavirus than other types of vaccines.
While Biovac will be operating as a so-called fill-finish site for Pfizer, with the vaccine raw material being brought in from Europe, it’s nevertheless a major step.
Under the agreement, the vaccines will be used exclusively on the continent, bolstering Africa’s self-sufficiency. More than 100 million doses are expected to be manufactured a year starting in 2022.
Morena Makhoana, Biovac’s chief executive officer, has already set his sites on the future, wondering about what other applications mRNA may have on a continent beset with diseases such as HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis, both seen as ailments that could be tackled with mRNA vaccines.
“We still want to get our teeth deep into mRNA and see what else it can be used for beyond Covid-19,” he said. “That is the end game for self- sustainability.”
While the agreement comes as much of the developed world is seeing a potential end in sight to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important for Africa.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said on July 1 that the continent will only be able to “break the back” of the pandemic by the end of next year, assuming enough vaccines are available.
Deals such as the one announced Wednesday by Pfizer could have come earlier, but there’s still time for them to do plenty of good. — Bloomberg.
