Germany Donates over 271,000 COVID-19 Vaccines to Ethiopia

Addis Ababa September 17/2021 (ENA) The Government of Germany has donated 271, 200 COVID-19 vaccines to Ethiopia today.

Germany Embassy in Ethiopia Chargé d'Affair, Heiko Nitzschke handed over the AstraZeneca doses to Health Minister, Dr. Lia Tadesse in the presence of UNICEF Deputy Representative in Ethiopia, Michele Servadei.

During the hand over ceremony, Health Minister Dr. Lia Tadesse said global solidarity and collaborations are necessary to fight the pandemic together.

According to Lia, the amount of vaccines coming in to the country and the proportion of people vaccinated since March 2021 are far from the target wanted to be achieved when the country is facing a surge in the Covid-19 cases in the past month.

“Today’s donation is also demonstrating this solidarity and I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the Germany Government for their donation of more than 270,000 COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX facility which comes at a critical time when we are facing a surge of cases in the past one month,” Lia said.

The amount of vaccines coming in and the portion of people getting the vaccines are very limited compared to the country’s estimated 100 million plus population, the Minister indicated.

“So far, (since March 2021) we have been able to administer close to 3 million doses which vaccinated close to 2.5 million of our communities. But as you can see, in a country with 110 million populations, this is still very far from where we want to go and such collaboration, support and partnerships are critical to advance the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines to where we want to achieve,” she stressed.

Noting that Germany has also donated 900,000 surgical masks to the Government of Ethiopia as a sign of solidarity with Ethiopia, She added “I would like to appreciate the additional donation of close to 1 million surgical masks which are also helping our response activities across the country.”

Germany Chargé d’Affaires, Heiko Nitzschke on his part said the donations to Ethiopia are part of Germany’s global effort to beat the pandemic together.

“We can only beat the coronavirus together worldwide," he noted, adding that "this is why we support Ethiopia with today’s vaccine donation.”

Germany is the second largest donor to the ACT Accelerator at present and has so far provided 2.2 billion euro to the ACT Accelerator, according to him, and will donate 100 million doses to countries in transition and developing countries, which will primarily be distributed through the COVAX vaccine platform.

“One thing is certain,” he said underlying that “nobody is safe until everybody is safe. And to achieve this we need multilateral and inclusive responses to COVID-19 such as COVAX.”

COVAX has so far supplied over 230 million doses to 238 countries around the world, it was learned.  

The COVID-19 positivity rate, severe cases and death have recently been increasing in Ethiopia.

Health officials have been repeatedly warning of adherence for the general public to the prevention guidelines and advising to vaccinate.