12th African Country Reaches COVID-19 Vaccination Goal

"We had to go and find people willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, now they come by themselves!" exclaims Mr. Elhadi Sidi Mohamed, head of the vaccination site at the National Hospital Center in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on October 15, 2021. 

"At the launch of the third vaccination campaign, we even had too many people here."

"Everyone wanted to be the first to be vaccinated."

In early September 2021, Mauritania became the 12th country on the African continent to reach the World Health Organization (WHO) 's goal of vaccinating at least 10% of the population against COVID-19 by the end of September.

As of early October, more than 580 000 people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, representing 12% of Mauritania's population of about 4.5 million.

Officially known as the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, it received its first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 through a bilateral agreement with China.

The first vaccination campaign, launched in March 2021, was met with a cool reception.

When the second vaccination campaign was launched in June, only 30 000 people had been vaccinated.

There was a lot of reluctance, and rumors about the danger of the vaccines were circulating on social networks. So much so that 120 000 doses of AstraZeneca's Vaxzevria vaccine were almost lost, as no one could find takers before the expiration date.

Vaxzevria is made from a virus (ChAdOx1), a weakened version of a common cold virus. In addition, genetic material has been added to the ChAdOx1 construct, used to make proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus called Spike glycoprotein.

The Vaxzevria vaccine does not contain the ChAdOx1 virus itself and cannot cause COVID-19, says the European Medicines Agency.