SA Covid vaccine plant may shut on a lack of orders

AFRICAN efforts to produce Covid-19 vaccines on the continent may face a setback amid a dearth of orders for the injections.

Aspen Pharmacare informed the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention it’s concerned about a lack of requests for Covid-19 vaccines and may close that manufacturing line if nothing changes, the head of the African Union’s public health agency said.

https://assets.poool.fr/advanced-paywall-frame.html The continent’s biggest drug-maker is making the doses on behalf of Johnson & Johnson at a plant in South Africa and in March said it agreed to make those shots under its own brand.

The Durban-based company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The absence of orders comes as countries on the continent left behind in the initial global rollout now have more shots than they have been able to administer. Both Africa CDC and the World Health Organization have called for better coordination of supplies, urging donors