ADDIS ABABA, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Creating efficient market linkage is crucial to boosting the local production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa, a senior Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) official has said.

       Ahmed Ogwell, deputy director of the Africa CDC, while addressing a press briefing on Thursday, said that African COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers should be given priority among purchasing African countries and institutions so as to promote the local production of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.

       "As far as the local production (of COVID-19 vaccines) is concerned, market is the key to ensuring that we have thriving local production manufacturing enterprises," the deputy director said.

       All those who are purchasing vaccines at the global level for African countries need to purchase those from African producers first and then they can be able to go to non-African producers after, he said.

       "This is our ambition, this is our commitment, and this is the principle that we are pushing very hard so that manufacturers (in Africa) do not get to a situation where they would have to close (their manufacturing plant). We hope it doesn't come to that," Ogwell added.

       According to figures from the Africa CDC, 784 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been procured by 54 African Union members. Eritrea is the remaining AU member state yet to start the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

       The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the African Union, said around 17.2 percent of the population on the continent has been fully vaccinated.

       Out of the 784 million COVID-19 vaccine doses procured so far, about 548 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered, which corresponds to 70 percent of the total supply available in Africa.

       As of Wednesday evening, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa had reached 11,458,664 with 252,197 deaths and 10,818,872 recoveries, according to the agency.