The manufacturing of the anti-covid vaccine in Morocco will “certainly” help fight the pandemic in Africa, said Tuesday in Rabat, director of the African Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC Africa), Dr. John Nkengasong.
“I have learned that in a few months Morocco will start manufacturing vaccines. This will certainly help in the fight against Covid-19 in the Kingdom, but also at the continental level,” he told the press at the end of talks in Rabat with Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita.
Nkengasong also praised the scale of the vaccination campaign in Morocco, “which has already vaccinated more than 45% of the population, making it the first country in Africa to have really high coverage, comparable to what we have seen in European countries”.
He also expressed CDC Africa’s “support” for all the actions carried out by the Kingdom to fight Covid-19 at the local and continental levels, mentioning, in this regard, the donations granted last year by Morocco to about twenty African countries to help them fight the pandemic.
The CDC Africa chief, who is on a working visit to Morocco at the head of a high-level delegation, also held a meeting with Health Minister Khalid Aït Taleb, during which he highlighted Morocco’s actions to pool African countries’ efforts in the fight against the pandemic.
He stressed that his visit to the Kingdom aims to discuss ways to enable African countries to benefit from the Moroccan experience and good practices for an effective management of the crisis.
Morocco has so far administered 28.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines in addition to 300,000 doses of Johson & Johnson.
Last week it took receipt of a first shipment of 700,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as it diversifies supply sources to meet its herd immunity goal.