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Monday, February 17, 2025

African Union health watchdog CDC appeals for calm over Omicron

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1172 days ago
20211203
Nkengasong says Africa CDC is well placed to contain a recent surge in COVID-19 cases [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]

Nkengasong says Africa CDC is well placed to contain a recent surge in COVID-19 cases [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]

SOURCE: Al Jazeera

The head of the African Union’s health watch­dog urges mod­er­a­tion in the world’s re­ac­tion to the new coro­n­avirus vari­ant.

The African Union’s health watch­dog has ap­pealed for calm over Omi­cron, the new, heav­i­ly mu­tat­ed coro­n­avirus vari­ant which has prompt­ed many coun­tries to im­pose new re­stric­tions.

The vari­ant was first re­port­ed to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) by South Africa a week ago, and has quick­ly showed up across con­ti­nents, deep­en­ing fears of an­oth­er dead­ly wave of in­fec­tions and sig­nalling that the near­ly two-year bat­tle against the pan­dem­ic is not over.

But John Nken­ga­song, head of the Africa Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (Africa CDC), on Thurs­day urged mod­er­a­tion.

“We are very con­cerned but are not wor­ried that the sit­u­a­tion can­not be man­aged,” he told a press brief­ing. “There is no need to pan­ic. We are not de­fence­less.”

An­nounced a week ago, the Omi­cron has al­ready seen some Eu­ro­pean gov­ern­ments swift­ly rein­tro­duce tough mea­sures, in­clud­ing manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing, while trav­el re­stric­tions, most­ly tar­get­ing South­ern Africa, have al­so come in­to force.

The Africa CDC said it had been prepar­ing “for the longest time” for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new vari­ant and was well placed to con­tain a surge in cas­es.

The Omi­cron vari­ant has been re­port­ed in four African coun­tries, in­clud­ing South Africa, Ghana, Nige­ria and Botswana, it said.

“This will be the fourth wave that we are fac­ing as a con­ti­nent,” Nken­ga­song said.

“We know how to de­ploy rapid re­spon­ders, we know how to pro­vide the in­ter­ven­tions that are nec­es­sary,” he said, adding that vac­cines were al­so “flow­ing very steadi­ly” in­to the con­ti­nent.

How­ev­er, vac­cine up­take in Africa, a con­ti­nent of near­ly 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple, has been low, with on­ly 7 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed.

Im­mu­ni­sa­tion cam­paigns suf­fered a slow start due to poor ac­cess to jabs, and in some coun­tries hes­i­tan­cy sur­round­ing COVID-19 vac­cines is wide­spread.

Africa needs an es­ti­mat­ed 1.5 bil­lion vac­cine dos­es to im­mu­nise 60 per­cent of its in­hab­i­tants and achieve some lev­el of herd im­mu­ni­ty. So far, the con­ti­nent has re­ceived about 400 mil­lion dos­es.

The Unit­ed Na­tions and the WHO in Oc­to­ber crit­i­cised rich na­tions’ roll­out of boost­er shots, say­ing this crimped poor­er na­tions’ ac­cess to jabs.

COVID-19


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