Day: July 15, 2021

NAIROBI – The World Health Organization has warned that COVID-19 is gaining ground in Africa, with the death toll jumping 43% in the past week. WHO says the continent recorded 1 million new cases in just one month, with several countries facing shortages of oxygen and beds for patients.

Speaking during a virtual press briefing Thursday, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director, said Africa is recording its highest number of COVID-19 cases since the virus hit the continent in early 2020.

“Over the past month, Africa recorded an additional 1 million cases,” Moeti said. “This is the shortest time it has taken so far to add one1 million cases. Comparatively, it took around three months to move from 4 million to 5 million cases. This COVID-19 resurgence is the fastest the continent has seen.”

The global health agency says 12 African countries are experiencing an upward trend of coronavirus, including Algeria, Malawi, Senegal and Zimbabwe.

Moeti says the number of Africans losing lives to the virus is high.

“As this surge sweeps across Africa, we are witnessing a brutal cost, and life-lost deaths have climbed steeply for the past five weeks, jumping 40 percent in the past week,” Moeti said. “This is a clear warning our hospitals are at a breaking point. In all, 153,000 people have sadly died. Africa is just 1 percent shy of the peak in fatalities reached in January.”

The increase in deaths is partly blamed on the delta coronavirus variant that medical experts say is the most transmittable of all the variants. It has been reported in 21 African countries.

Namibia is one African country where the total number of COVID-19 positives is on the decline. However, more than 1,000 people have died there from COVID-19 in the last month.

Ismail Katjitae is a physician at the Ministry of Health and Social Services in Namibia. He explains why the death rate is so high.

“A high prevalence of comorbidities in some communities, limited capacity in some districts and regions to manage severe and critical cases,” Katjitae said. “And a strong misinformation lobby resulting in noncompliance with public health measures, underutilizing available health care services, and delayed complicated presentation in our health facilities.”

So far, only 18 million people out of the 1.3 billion living in Africa have been vaccinated. Some African countries blame the slow vaccination process on the shortage of vaccine doses in the global market.

Catherine Kyobutungi is the head of the African Population and Health Research Center. She says African governments should ask their citizens to follow health protocols like washing hands and wearing masks to limit the spread of the virus.

“Other than the usual measures, Africa does not have too many options without really having much of its population vaccinated,” Kyobutungi said. “So, the hope is that in the next month around August, many countries will receive at least substantial doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, but before then, keeping in place the usual measures.”

Most African countries have eased health measures meant to combat the spread of the virus for economic reasons, and failure to follow those measures is blamed for the spread.

Some African countries expect to get hundreds of thousands of vaccines in the coming weeks as the Aspen pharmaceutical company in South Africa begins producing 400 million vaccines.

Source: Voice of America

Haiti, reeling from the assassination of its president and the coronavirus pandemic, has received its first half-million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund said Thursday.

UNICEF said in a statement the doses were donated by the U.S. and delivered Wednesday through COVAX, an initiative for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

“Until yesterday, Haiti was the only country in the Americas without a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine,” UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.

“Thanks to this donation, hundreds of thousands of Haitians will receive their shots against COVID-19,” UNICEF said. “Yet, despite the collective efforts to kickstart the vaccination campaign soon, most of the Haitian population is at risk of remaining unvaccinated due to the limited availability of doses currently in the country.”

In an exclusive interview with VOA, U.S. National Security Council member Juan Gonzalez said the decision to speed up vaccine delivery came after a U.S. delegation visited Port-au-Prince on Sunday.

“Wednesday, we provided as a result of the trip 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines. And the priority for those is to make sure we are vaccinating health care workers so that Haiti’s hospitals and the institutions that are providing care and those that have been impacted by the pandemic — those health care workers — are vaccinated,” Gonzalez told VOA.

UNICEF said COVID-19 deaths and infections almost doubled in the first five months of this year in Haiti, one of only 10 countries that have not launched a vaccination campaign.

The initial batch of vaccines came after the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise by an armed hit-squad in his heavily guarded private home.

Moise’s death occurred amid a period of heightened political instability and gang violence in the country. His assassination has raised fears of another surge in COVID-19 cases, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

U.S. President Joe Biden promised in June to deliver 80 million doses worldwide by the end of the month. His administration plans to donate an additional 500 million doses globally in the next year, and 200 million by the end of 2021.

COVAX is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

Source: Voice of America