AFRICA CDC advises that African countries without the dominant coronavirus variant in South Africa should go ahead and use the AstraZeneca vaccine for covid-19. The continent continues to lag far behind in vaccination against the viral pandemic.
Africa has seen an average 18% decrease in new infections of the new coronavirus over the past four weeks, the African Union Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) announced yesterday.
In the weekly web-based press conference from Addis Ababa on the Covid-19 situation on the continent, the director of the African Union (AU) specialized agency, John Nkengasong, cautioned, however, that studies show that more people have been exposed to the virus than the 3.7 million confirmed cases, and that “definitely not all deaths are being accounted for, especially in the second wave.”
Africa has more than 96,000 confirmed deaths, and Nkengasong said yesterday that the continent will pass the 100,000 death mark next week. Although the recent resurgence of cases on the continent has been considerably more deadly than the first wave, “Africa has a lot to be proud of for the initial response, and certainly has done much better than Europe,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,who attended the briefing.
Piot urged for an equitable global distribution of the anti-Covid-19 vaccines, noting that once again, rich countries are providing the bulk of the vaccines produced so far, and recalling that it took almost a decade during the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for significant numbers of people on the African continent to have access to anti-HIV drugs.
Africa has so far been relatively little affected by the pandemic, accounting for only about 3.5 percent of Covid-19 cases and 4 percent of deaths worldwide, according to Africa CDC data. Many African countries are now facing a second, more accelerated wave of infection, however, and are making efforts to obtain sufficient vaccines to stop the pandemic’s advance.
The WHO has deemed the continent’s goal of vaccinating 30 percent of Africa’s population by the end of the year “realistic.”
Africa is only now beginning to receive covid-19 vaccines on a large scale, and news this week from South Africa, the continent’s hardest-hit country, has caused shock.
South African health officials announced Wednesday that the country would not use AstraZeneca’s vaccine, citing a study suggesting that the immunizer shows unsatisfactory results in preventing mild to moderate illness caused by the South African variant of Covid-19.
The Africa CDC maintained yesterday, however, that African countries with the now-dominant variant in South Africa should accelerate plans for vaccination campaigns with any anti-covid-19 vaccines that have received authorization or emergency approval by regulatory authorities.
