[News] WHO alerts Africa to avoid what happens in India with COVID-19

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To date, the African continent has registered 4.6 million cases.

African authorities and experts such as the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned of the risk of lowering their guard and failing to increase vaccination against COVID-19 and warned that what is happening in the India could also happen in Africa.

Gathered virtually in a meeting organized by the African Union (AU) to assess the continental response to the pandemic, heads of state, ministers and international and regional health authorities agreed on the need not to be "complacent" and to maintain the measures prevention, waiting for African countries to have greater access to vaccines.

"What has happened in other places can happen in our Africa if we lower our guard," warned the director general of the WHO (an Ethiopian national), referring to the potential escalation of cases and situations of serious health emergency due to the appearance of new variants.

"What we see in India can happen on our continent," said WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti.

In this sense, the director of the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, reviewed the heterogeneous situation between countries - with the majority going through or preparing for a third wave - and warned that, in general , a growing “pandemic fatigue” is detected in the po[CENSORED]tion, which leads to non-compliance with preventive measures.

To date, the African continent has registered 4.6 million cases, of which 123,676 ended in deaths, according to data from the Africa CDC.

So far, only Angola, Kenya, Morocco and Uganda have detected cases of variant B.1.617 (the one identified in India), but the region has already had to face the effects of changes in the virus, especially the south of the continent with variant B.1.351, which remains dominant in South Africa and is more contagious and resistant to vaccines.

‘We are not helpless’

Despite the slow progress of vaccination in Africa, which has only received some 37 million doses - and 53% administered - for a po[CENSORED]tion of 1,216 million people, the experts and authorities participating in this high-level meeting highlighted that Africa had so far good results in their fight against the pandemic and that the measures put into practice are working.

"We are not totally helpless," said Nkengasong, before calling on governments to encourage their citizens to maintain preventive measures.

In view of the remoteness of the goal of group immunity for Africa, the director of the African CDC also called for increased testing and genomic surveillance to detect possible variants.

He also drew attention to the need for countries to provide oxygen and health protection equipment, as a preventive measure, given the complicated health situation in India.

On the positive side, the meeting also celebrated progress regarding the temporary suspension of patents for anticovid vaccines, an initiative led by South Africa and India within the World Trade Organization (WTO), which this week he added by surprise the support of the United States.

Although the meeting focused on the African response against COVID-19, the collateral effects of the pandemic were also discussed, which, due to the delay in vaccination, Africa will have to endure longer.

In this regard, “disruptions” in health systems were mentioned, especially in terms of the interruption of vaccination campaigns for other diseases, such as measles.

The high impact of the pandemic on the African economy was also emphasized, which will foreseeably not see such a rapid recovery due to slow immunization.

In that sense, the former president of Liberia and Nobel Peace Prize Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recalled that the pandemic has returned many Africans to “extreme poverty”.

Likewise, she asked to pay attention to the additional suffering for women and girls, due to the lack of coverage in reproductive health issues, early marriages, domestic violence and increased risk of not returning to school due to the crisis.