• Spike Driven By Public Fatigue With Key Health Measures Experts
• Hospital Admissions Increase Rapidly
The confirmation of the highly transmissible and deadly Delta variant of COVID-19 in Lagos and Oyo States, last Monday, and spike in pandemic-induced deaths in Africa, has heightened concerns of resurgence of infections in the country.
Experts, who spoke to The Guardian, yesterday, said the surge in new infections and deaths was driven by public fatigue with key health measures and increased spread of variants.
They also warned that the situation has led to rapid increase in hospital admissions even as countries face shortages in oxygen and intensive care beds.
COVID-19: Africa needs to break the Circle of Dependency Listen to article
Africa Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (AVMI) primarily aims at promoting the establishment of sustainable human vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa. Since its establishment, AVMI together with multiple and different partners, have been advocating for the establishment of vaccine development and manufacturing in Africa.
With the outbreak of coronavirus, AVMI has embarked on public education on the risk of the pandemic and further been persuading African leaders about the need to seriously prioritize the manufacturing of vaccines instead of depending on external supply.
In this snapshot interview, Patrick Tippoo, Executive Director at the Africa Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative, explains that vaccine manufacturing is a complex, time-consuming exercise requiring considerable commitment, and financial as well as technical resources. He further underscores the fact that the capital investment required
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The COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is the global roll-out of vaccines that protect against the severe disease and preferably drives herd immunity. In this report by Sade Oguntola, experts speak on some challenges to roll-out if the vaccine in Nigeria and its implication on the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is global roll-out of vaccines that protect against severe disease and preferably drives herd immunity. Regulators in numerous countries have authorised or approved COVID-19 vaccines for human use, with more expected to be licensed in 2021.
‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.
South Africa has been especially hard hit. A mutant strain that local scientists said last week is 50 per cent more infectious, is ravaging the country. Hospitals are turning patients away, medical oxygen supply is stretched, and undertakers are struggling to cope with burials. More than 40,500 deaths related to Covid-19 have been reported so far.
The South African government has set a target to have two-thirds of its 60 million people inoculated, but it has yet to secure the 80 million doses scientists say would be needed to achieve this. The state has committed to purchasing 12 million doses through Covax, the global initiative to secure vaccines for poorer countries.
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SADE OGUNTOLA reports that experts in the country are divided over COVID-19 vaccines and drugs as some believe that government should encourage local researchers to produce them locally, just as some local production of vaccines would take years to happen during which many more Nigerians would have died.
The COVID-19 pandemic has surely ravaged the whole world raking up unexpected mortality figures. Surprisingly, Africa has been largely spared, taking into consideration the number of fatalities recorded on the entire continent which is far lower than the reported figures in some individual countries in Europe.
However, while the vaccine has become available in Europe and America since December 2020 and inoculation has started in earnest, Nigeria, like many African countries, is still waiting for its first consignment of vaccines slated for late January, even as the death toll surges.