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Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and BioNTech have pledged to deliver 1-billion doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to poorer nations this year, and another 1 billion next year.
At a G20 summit in Rome on Friday the European countries made their own pledges to donate a combined 100-million doses by the end of the year. Some of those will go to African countries through the COVAX initiative.
These commitments come as global health authorities warned the world is at a crisis point with the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Rich countries have significant access to the vaccines, and developing countries are struggling to catch up.
In the meantime the vaccine rollout remains sluggish on the continent where there is not enough supply.
So when the southern African nation Malawi burned nearly 20,000 doses of vaccines, it raised a lot of questions. Especially because the government's decision to burn the vaccines went against advice from the WHO and the African CDC.
Both organizations advised Malawi not to destroy COVID-19 vaccines saying even though they had passed their expiration dates - they were still safe to use.
In the Malawian capital Lilongwe, the burning of the vaccines was made a ceremony of sorts.
It was an event put on for the cameras. 20,000 doses of Malawi’s Covid-19 vaccine allocation, laid out to be destroyed. The health minister personally led the exercise, to send a message to the public that has been skeptical of the vaccines.
Malawi's health experts are also trying to assure the public of the vaccines safety and efficacy.
Malawi, like many other nations, is short of Covid-19 doses. So far only a tiny fraction of its 18 million people have been vaccinated.
Malawi has reported just over a thousand Covid-19 deaths. The government is having to work hard to convince people to get vaccinated.
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