Vaccine production front and center at G20 Africa summit: Vaccinemaker BioNTech is planning to begin manufacturing mRNA malaria and TB vaccines in Rwanda and Senegal, the CEO of the company said during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Compact with Africa summit in Germany at the weekend, according to a joint statement.

Senegal is also on its way to becoming West Africa’s covid vaccine production hub, receiving mns of EUR from the EU to set up a new manufacturing facility. This is part of the EU’s EUR 1 bn initiative to boost the continent’s production capacity, with Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda and Morocco also being named as potential candidates.

Egypt might also become one of Africa’s key covid vaccine makers, reportedly being asked by the African Union to produce 1 bn shots every year for export across the continent. State-owned vaccine maker Vacsera is already manufacturing China’s Sinovac, and will soon increase capacity to 15-18.5 mn shots a month.

President El Sisi calls for action: Attending the summit virtually, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi stressed that African countries are still unable to access enough covid vaccines, and called on the international community to boost production capacity on the continent, Ittihadiya said in a statement.

Germany has already agreed to step up its donations to Africa from 30 mn to 70 mn vaccine doses by the end of the year, Chancellor Angela Merkel said, according to Reuters. Merkel did not specify a timeline or disclose how the shots would be divided, but said she was confident that there could be a “transfer, step by step, of the technology” to allow the production of jabs in Africa — where only 2% of the African 1.3 bn population have been inoculated against the virus.

A new Chinese vaccine showed 82% efficacy against serious covid-19 cases during late-stage trails, Bloomberg reports. Developer Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products said in a bourse filing that the jab was found to be 93% effective against the alpha covid-19 variant and about 78% effective against delta. None of the 28.5k people who took part in the trial entered critical care or died.