VOA健康报道2022--世卫组织宣布非洲将生产首批新冠疫苗

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified the first six African countries to receive the technology to produce mRNA vaccines².

The nations will be Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia. The WHO announcement came Friday during a meeting of European Union and African Union countries in Brussels, Belgium.

mRNA is the technology that companies such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna used to create their COVID-19 vaccines. But those companies have centered on commercial operations to make their vaccines widely available in most Western nations across the world.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have chosen not to share their vaccine¹ production technology with the WHO and its partners in an effort to get more vaccines to poorer countries. The six nations named Friday were chosen to build vaccine production centers that will aim to copy the mRNA technology.

The WHO estimates that only 11 percent of the population in Africa is fully³ vaccinated⁴, compared with a worldwide average of about 50 percent.

A United Nations-backed effort known as COVAX to bring COVID-19 vaccines to lower-income countries has already missed numerous targets. So far, only about 10 percent of people in poorer countries have received at least one vaccine injection.

WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the Brussels meeting that although more than 10 billion COVID-19 shots have been given, much of the world remains⁵ unvaccinated. "The tragedy, of course, is that billions of people are yet to benefit from these life-saving tools," Ghebreyesus said.

Last June, the WHO chose a group of South African companies to run its worldwide mRNA "hub." The hub is designed to lead efforts to develop mRNA vaccine technology for lower and middle-income nations.

From that effort, South African company Afrigen Biologics said it was able to replicate⁶ Moderna's vaccine technology to produce its own version of the American company's COVID-19 shot. But the WHO has said the first approval of Afrigen's candidate vaccine may not come until 2024.

The hub has already begun establishing mRNA vaccine manufacturing laboratories and is working to launch commercial production. Training involving the chosen countries is expected to begin next month.

BioNTech to establish manufacturing centers

Earlier this week, German vaccine maker⁷ BioNTech announced plans to establish its own manufacturing centers in Africa.

At an event at its production center in Marburg, Germany, the company presented a model of the kind of vaccine production center it plans to ship to Africa. The presentation was attended by Ghebreyesus and the presidents of Senegal, Ghana and Rwanda.

Each center will be made from a collection of shipping⁸ containers that can be put together upon arrival. The manufacturing centers will include all equipment needed for making the company's mRNA vaccine.

BioNTech said the first manufacturing center is expected to be shipped to either Senegal or Rwanda in the second half of this year. The company says it aims to start production of up to 50 million vaccine shots per year within 12 months.

"Our goal is to enable mRNA production on all continents," BioNTech chief Ugur Sahin told The Associated Press.

BioNTech said its employees would run the operations at first while the company trains local partners to take over the manufacturing process.

Words in This Story

commercial – adj. related to buying and selling things

benefit – v. to be helped by something

hub – n. a place that is the center of a particular activity

replicate – v. to make or do something again in exactly the same way

1 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

2 vaccines   

疫苗，痘苗( vaccine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His team are at the forefront of scientific research into vaccines. 他的小组处于疫苗科研的最前沿。
• The vaccines were kept cool in refrigerators. 疫苗放在冰箱中冷藏。

3 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

4 vaccinated   

[医]已接种的，种痘的，接种过疫菌的

参考例句：

• I was vaccinated against tetanus. 我接种了破伤风疫苗。
• Were you vaccinated against smallpox as a child? 你小时候打过天花疫苗吗？

5 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

6 replicate   

v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的

参考例句：

• The DNA of chromatin must replicate before cell division.染色质DNA在细胞分裂之前必须复制。
• It is also easy to replicate,as the next subsection explains.就像下一个小节详细说明的那样，它还可以被轻易的复制。

7 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

8 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。