The African continent may not attain the goal of vaccinating 70 per cent of its 1.3 billion inhabitants towards COVID-19 till the second half of 2024, a goal most of the world’s richer nations have already met, the World Well being Group mentioned Tuesday.
The warning comes because the world faces a brand new surge in instances pushed by the extremely infectious Omicron variant.
Well being officers in South Africa, which first introduced the variant, say early knowledge point out it causes much less extreme sickness and shorter, much less intensive hospital stays. However some richer nations have rushed to permit booster vaccine doses in response, at the same time as lower than eight per cent of Africa’s inhabitants has acquired two doses.
“We’ll by no means get out of this if we don’t work collectively as one world,” Flavia Senkubuge, president of the Faculties of Medication of South Africa, informed reporters on the WHO briefing.
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Simply 20 of Africa’s 54 nations have absolutely vaccinated at the very least 10 per cent of their populations towards COVID-19. And 10 nations have absolutely vaccinated lower than two per cent of their populations.
The WHO Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, pushed again towards any suggestion that African nations are permitting giant numbers of vaccine doses to go to waste amid poor infrastructure and vaccine hesitancy.
The African continent has acquired about 434 million vaccine doses, and a few 910,000 of them have expired in 20 nations, representing lower than 1 / 4 of 1 per cent, Moeti mentioned.
The principle problem in Africa, she mentioned, stays entry to vaccine provides.
© 2021 The Canadian Press
