Over 6400 deaths were recorded, a 2% rise compared with the previous week.

The rise in vaccine shipments comes as Africa sees its second week of falling case numbers after a steep and unbroken eight-week surge.

Ghana was the first country in the world to receive vaccines through COVAX in late February.

Over 1 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses arrived on Saturday from the US.

WHO urges African countries to urgently ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations as the squeeze on vaccine shipments eases.

Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia accounted for 83% of the new deaths recorded in the past week.

With case numbers doubling every three weeks, the Delta variant is spreading to a growing number of countries.

The COVID-19 upsurge comes as the vaccine supply crunch persists.

A lack of adherence to transmission prevention measures has fuelled the new surge that coincides with colder seasonal weather in southern Africa and as more contagious variants spread.

Only 38 million vaccines have been received on the continent of about 1.2 billion people.

Just 2% of the continent’s nearly 1.3 billion people have received one dose and only 9.4 million Africans are fully vaccinated.

Country faces health, humanitarian, climate and economic challenges.