Nairobi, Kenya
Reuters
COVID-19 cases rose by over 20 per cent week-on-week in nearly two dozen African countries and progress on vaccinating Africans is proceeding slowly, with just 0.79 per cent of people on the continent fully vaccinated, senior health officials said on Thursday.
“Africa is in the midst of a full blown third wave…We’ve seen in India and elsewhere how quickly COVID-19 can rebound and overwhelm health systems,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, told a news conference.
Kenyan tour guide, Daniel Ole Kissipan, receives the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) under the COVAX scheme, in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27th April. PICTURE: Reuters/Monicah Mwangi/File photo.
New cases are up nearly 30 per cent in the past week and deaths are up by 15 per cent, she said, with five countries – South Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, Uganda and Namibia – accounting for 76 per cent of the new cases.
The continent of 1.3 billion people has not yet been battered with an emergency during the pandemic on the scale of that recently facing India, but officials including Moeti continue to warn that such a catastrophe could hit.
African nations lack sufficient numbers of hospital beds and oxygen supplies, and would be even more overwhelmed than India if cases surged in a similar way, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned in April.
Africa has reported more than five million COVID-19 cases, representing 2.9 per cent of total cases globally, according to the Africa CDC.
The Africa CDC’s chief John Nkengasong told reporters in a separate news conference on Thursday that amid quickly rising cases in many countries, progress on vaccination campaigns is generally slow.
Four African countries have not begun vaccination campaigns, but the WHO said on Thursday that Tanzania plans to request to join the COVAX global vaccine-sharing facility. This was the latest sign of the country’s change of tack following the death of its COVID-19 sceptic president in March.
The aim of COVAX is to help poorer countries vaccinate their people.
Both Moeti and Nkengasong stressed that African nations carrying out vaccinations at a relatively good pace were running out of their stocks.
Five African countries – Sao Tome and Principe, Morocco, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Libya – have used 90 per cent or more of their vaccine stocks, according to the WHO.
Nkengasong welcomed the Group of Seven’s pledge of one billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, but said news should be put in the right context.
“The one billion doses are not here now. We are hoping they will be here soon.”
