Africa's top public health body said on Thursday it is still in discussions with various potential buyers for the branded vaccine of South African pharmaceutical Aspen Pharmacare's.

Aspen had told Reuters on Wednesday that its vaccine production capacity might go idle soon if it doesn't get orders.

"We as African CDC, the African Union, we do not want to see a situation where Aspen closes any of their manufacturing capacity to (produce) COVID-19 vaccines," Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, Acting Director of Africa CDC, told reporters.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee in Johannesburg and Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru, editing by Mark Heinrich)


Reuters