AFRICA is unlikely to hit its target of vaccinating 70 per cent of its population until toward the end of the year after next, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned today.

The UN health agency’s assessment will exacerbate anger over vaccine-hoarding by the world’s richest countries and opposition from Britain, the EU and Switzerland to a global vaccine patent waiver to allow developing countries to produce their own vaccines.

The warning comes as the world faces a new surge in cases driven by the highly infectious omicron variant.

Health officials in South Africa, which first announced the variant, say early data indicate it causes less severe illness and shorter, less intensive hospital stays.

But some richer countries have rushed to allow booster vaccine doses in response, even as less than 8 per cent of Africa’s population has received two doses.

“We will never get out of this if we don’t work together as one world,” Flavia Senkubuge, president of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, told reporters at the WHO briefing.

Just 20 of Africa’s 54 countries have fully vaccinated at least 10 per cent of their populations against Covid-19. And 10 countries have fully vaccinated less than 2 per cent of their populations.

WHO Africa director Matshidiso Moeti rejected against the suggestion that African nations are allowing large numbers of vaccine doses to go to waste amid poor infrastructure and vaccine hesitancy.

The African continent has received about 434 million vaccine doses, and some 910,000 of them have expired in 20 countries, representing less than a quarter of 1 per cent, Ms Moeti said.

The main challenge in Africa, she said, remains access to vaccine supplies.