WHO reveals a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in African countries.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says only thirteen African countries have vaccinated more than 10 percent of their country’s population.

This comes as the continent records over 8.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases with more than 7.4 million recoveries and 357,000 deaths cumulatively.

In a tweet on its official Twitter page on Sunday, WHO blamed crippling vaccine supply shortage for the laggard vaccination exercise.

“13 African countries have reached the @WHO target of fully vaccinating more than 10% of its population against #COVID19 by the end of September. Crippling vaccine supply shortages have slowed down many countries in the Region,” WHO tweeted.

Amongst the countries to have fully vaccinated more than 10 percent of their population include Seychelles, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia, and Comoros.

Others are Cape Verde, Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritania, and Equatorial Guinea.

However, Nigeria was not listed amongst the countries to have vaccinated more than 10 percent of its population.

Nigeria which started its vaccination exercise in March after receiving its first batch of Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine has so far vaccinated only 0.7 percent of its population.

Statistics by Johns Hopkins University and Our World in Data showed that Nigeria has administered at least 3,967,013 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, implying that only 1.42 million Nigerians representing 0.7 percent of the country’s population have been fully vaccinated.

Speaking on the development, the WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti in a tweet said the COVID-19 vaccination exercise was not fast enough.

Ms. Moeti called on vaccine manufacturing countries to open the gates and help protect countries ‘facing the greatest risk’.