Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti are the least vaccinated countries in the world against Covid-19, data has shown.
Just 0.05% of Burundi’s population has received at least one Covid vaccination dose, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data.
In Republic of Congo, 0.4% of people have been given at least one dose, while in Haiti that proportion of the population rises to around 1%.
Only 0.05% of the world’s underdeveloped countries have been fully vaccinated, but 72% of the population in developing and developed countries has been fully vaccinated.
Countries in which civil unrest and conflict are ongoing are also among the world’s least vaccinated, with violent combat making it difficult for vaccines to reach their general populations.
That is, due to the Yemeni civil war, only 2% of the Yemeni population has been vaccinated. Surprisingly, Sudan ended the war in 2018, but the vaccination rate is only 2%.
According to the World Health Organization, vaccination rates are also lower in African countries where the body’s immune system is weak.
South Africa, where the highly transmissible omicron strain of the virus was first identified last year, has vaccinated less than one-third of its population.
Meanwhile, fewer than one in three people in Caribbean nations Jamaica, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have been vaccinated against Covid.
Heshani Karunaratne.