By Martin Cole-
The Head Of The World Health Organization has raised alarm about the rate of infections in India. At a press briefing on Thursday, the World Health Organization’s Africa director Dr Matshidiso Moeti (pictured) warned that “the speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before.”
“COVID-19 cases are doubling every three weeks, compared to every four weeks at the start of the second wave. Almost 202,000 cases were reported in the past week and the continent is on the verge of exceeding its worst week ever in this pandemic,” she added.
Moeti highlighted 14 African countries now in resurgence, of which it said 12 have detected coronavirus variants of concern, including nine with the highly contagious Delta variant.
“With the rampant spread of more contagious variants, the threat to Africa rises to a whole new level.”
His warning comes after a recent situational report published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated that Africa “has exhibited a substantial increase in daily incidence since mid-May”, with daily case numbers rising threefold.
The report cites “weak adherence to public health measures, including an increase in social gatherings and movement” as contributing to the recent spike in infections.
“The COVID-19 situation in Africa is worrisome,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), tweeted last week. “Both the number of cases and deaths [between June 14-20] are almost 40 percent higher than in the week before.”
However, some contend the claim, emphasizing that Liberia cannot be seen to constitute the whole of Africa.
First identified in India, the Delta variant– said to be up to 60 percent more transmissible than other variants – has overall been detected in 16 African countries, according to the WHO.
These include South Africa, where President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a return to level-four measures on Sunday evening as the country recorded nearly 160,000 active cases, including a nationwide curfew between 9pm and 4am and a ban on gatherings.
The new rules, which took effect on Monday, are to be reviewed after two weeks. Meanwhile, Uganda has been under a strict 42-day lockdown since June 18 in response to a resurgence in infections, with the Delta variant predominating. Some 45 percent of Uganda’s 75,000 reported cases have occurred just in the past two months.
There also is a wide travel ban which has accompanied widespread school closures. A night-time curfew is in place between 7pm and 5:30am. Also a lag in vaccination figures across Africa has led to health officials appeal for access to more doses.
Just over 1 percent of the African population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the WHO, with Africa constituting just 1.5 percent of the 2.7 billion doses administered globally.WHO has warned that nearly 90 percent of African countries are expected to miss a target of vaccinating one-tenth of their population by September unless a further 225 million doses are received.
Vaccine Hesitancy
Some countries, including Liberia, initially experienced high levels of vaccine hesitancy amid concerns surrounding reports of rare blood clots in recipients of the Oxford-AstraZeneca offering in Europe.
Tedros, the head of the WHO, said at a news conference on Friday that vaccine hesitancy in Africa is not the problem: “There is no vaccine so why do we talk about vaccine hesitancy? The problem is vaccine supply … and we need vaccines now.”
Separately, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has not included the Covishield vaccine, the Indian-made version of AstraZeneca’s jab which comprises more than 90 percent of doses distributed so far to African countries under COVAX, a scheme designed to boost the distribution of vaccines to low-income nations, on its list of approved vaccines.
This Delta variant has the enhanced ability to prey on the vulnerable, particularly in places with low vaccination rates, he noted.