[Photo: News24]
South Africa is set to start manufacturing its own Covid-10 vaccine doses.
This is after President Cyril Ramaphosa opened a new manufacturing plant which will be the first in Africa to produce the vaccines.
The facility in Cape Town aims to start producing one billion doses annually by 2025.
South Africa has two other facilities which produce vaccines from semi-finished batches.
According to Ramaphosa the country and Africa at large has capability to create its own Covid-19 vaccines.
“The pandemic has revealed the huge disparities that exist within and between countries in access to quality healthcare, medicines, diagnostics and vaccines,” said Ramaphosa. Africa is responding to COVID-19 with a depth of scientific knowledge, expertise and capacity to make its own vaccines, he said.
According to Ramaphosa, Africa has secured 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the African Union’s vaccine acquisition task team, however the continent needs more.
“These doses represent only around half of what the continent needs to vaccinate 900 million people in order to achieve the 70% target set by the World Health Organization,” said Ramaphosa.
The factory was also launched by Patrick Soon-Shiong the founder of NantWorks, a multinational biotechnology firm based in the United States .
According to local reports, the firm invested about $200 million to start the facility.
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