Malawi’s choice to buy 1.5 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to vaccinate 4.5 million people for the coronavirus was based on, among other things, the vaccines’ low cost to the country’s National Treasury, APA learnt on Tuesday.
According to President Lazarus Chakwera, the AstraZeneca vaccine cost US$4 per dose, which was much cheaper than other available vaccines which averaged nearly US$100 per dose in costs.
“At four dollars a dose, it costs two and half times less than the two other vaccines types, almost four times less than a third type, five times less than a fourth type, and eight times less than a fifth type,” Chakwera told Malawians in a televised address.
Noting that the AstraZeneca’s efficacy was lower than the other high costing Covid-19 vaccines, the president said the low cost was the biggest factor in Malawi’s choice to order a vaccine which neighbouring South Africa has suspended for its low efficacy against the mutant variant behind a second wave of the virus.
Malawi’s decision to stick to the Oxford University-driven vaccine comes after its medical experts also acknowledged that the country now faced the mutant variant first reported in South Africa late last year.
Hundreds of Malawians have been returning home from South Africa in bus-loads, running away from the current hardship faced in the Rainbow Nation since the pandemic hit the continent’s most industrialised state.
The lockdowns and the economic activity restrictions have dried up the casual labour the Malawians used to occupy to sustain themselves there, forcing them to flee the country for home where they are quarantined on arrival to slow down cross-border Covid-19 transmissions.
NM/jn/APA