The Associated Press is quoting an adviser for the Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as saying the African Union has secured close to 300 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.

The continent is estimated to have over 1.2 billion people.

Nicaise Ndembi said in the interview that current AU chair, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday.

The vaccine doses are being secured independently of the global Covax effort, he added.

There have been 3,085,009 cases of the virus confirmed on the continent and more than 73,504 deaths, according to Africa CDC.

Individual African countries have been negotiating large purchase agreements with pharmaceuticals.

South Africa announced last week that it will get the first one million vaccine doses from the Serum Institute of India (SII) in January and an additional 500,000 doses in February.