NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says countries without the coronavirus variant dominant in South Africa should go ahead and use the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. And the World Health Organization suggests the vaccine even for African countries with the variant circulating widely. They spoke a day after South Africa announced it would not use the AstraZeneca vaccine. It cited a small study that suggested the vaccine was poor at preventing mild to moderate disease caused by the variant. A least eight countries on the 54-nation African continent have the variant. That includes Tanzania, whose president denies COVID-19 is there at all.
