Dilapidated health systems mean a lack of clinics or qualified personnel to administer vaccines. Many African countries lack the cold storage facilities or logistics chains for a large-scale vaccination campaign. Instead, the inoculation campaign has been slowed by a complex range of logistical, financial and even political issues. In fact, some studies suggest it’s a small part of the problem in South Africa. “The first, the most powerful, tool we have is vaccination.”īut the problem is not just a product of the misinformation-driven hesitancy that has plagued vaccination efforts in the West. “We know enough about the variant to know what we need to do to reduce transmission and to protect ourselves against severe disease and death,” said Mr. Masks remain mandatory in public, and a curfew is in place from midnight to 4 a.m. In a country where vaccines are free, this was a more desirable approach than imposing additional lockdown restrictions as he said that new virus infections in general more than tripled in a week. ![]() Before enforcing the new rules, though, a task team will investigate “a fair and sustainable approach.” In a briefing on Sunday to announce the country’s response to the new variant, President Cyril Ramaphosa said his cabinet was considering making vaccines mandatory for specific locations and activities. ![]() To prevent vaccines from expiring, the government has even deferred some deliveries scheduled for early next year. Vaccinations in South Africa are running at about half the target rate, officials said last week. But they are not being administered fast enough. South Africa has a better vaccination rate than most countries on the continent: Just under one-quarter of the population has been fully vaccinated, and the government said it has over five months’ worth of doses in its stores. Scientists in South Africa, which has the most sophisticated genomic sequencing facilities on the continent, were the first to announce the detection of the new variant, after it was found in four people in Botswana. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days. Source: Data for South Africa comes from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “But where they are available, countries are struggling to scale up.” “We haven’t completely overcome the problem of vaccine supply to lower-income countries,” said Shabir Madhi, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In recent weeks, vaccines have started to flow into Africa, and the new challenge is how to rapidly scale up vaccinations - as South Africa demonstrates. ![]() Around 10 percent of people in Africa have received one dose of a vaccine, compared with 64 percent in North America and 62 percent in Europe.īut the problem is changing shape. On the face of it, the emergence of the Omicron variant is the unhappy fulfillment of expert predictions that the failure to prioritize vaccinations for African countries would allow the coronavirus to continue to circulate and mutate there, imperiling the world’s ability to move beyond the pandemic.Īs Western nations kept most of the global vaccine supply for themselves, African countries were denied access to doses or could not afford them. ![]() A health worker greeted people at a vaccine pop-up center in August, in East Rand, South Africa, as part of a measure to help the government speed up the inoculation campaign in the country’s remote communities.
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