Category: Medical

The World Health Organization says genomic sequencing capability is being improved in Africa to better detect, monitor and respond to COVID-19 mutations.

Several variants of the coronavirus are circulating in African countries. The Delta variant is, by far, the most contagious and virulent. The variants have sparked flare-ups of this deadly disease. However, the Delta variant is most responsible for prolonging Africa’s third pandemic wave.

The World Health Organization says Africa’s COVID-19 third wave is now tapering off after a two-month surge, with the number of new cases decreasing by 23% last week. The World Health Organization says the case load remains extremely high, though, with more than 165,000 new weekly cases reported.

WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says the WHO is supporting countries in scaling up pathogen surveillance through genome sequencing. She says together with the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, the WHO is launching a new Regional Center of Excellence for Genomic Surveillance in Cape Town.

“Knowing which variants are circulating and where is critical for informing effective response operations … The continent lags far behind the rest of the world when it comes to sequencing, accounting for only 1% of over 3 million COVID-19 sequences conducted worldwide. So, this ground-breaking initiative aims to initially support 14 Southern African countries to scale up their genomic sequencing by 15-fold each month,” she said.

Moeti says analysis will shed light on the pathways COVID-19 is using to spread into communities. On the vaccine front, she notes Africa still lags far behind the world’s richer nations in inoculating its inhabitants.

“In the past week, the COVAX Facility has delivered over 5 million doses to African countries. I was saddened to read that three times as many doses have been thrown away in the United States alone — 15 million doses since March 2021. This is enough vaccines to cover everyone over 18 years in Liberia, Mauritania, and the Gambia, for example,” she said.

Moeti says high-income countries have not kept their pledges to share 1 billion doses globally. So far, she says only 120 million doses have been released.

She notes only 3% of the continent’s 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated. She says Africa has passed the sad milestone of 200,000 lives lost to the coronavirus, lives that could have been saved had they received a dose of the vaccine.

Source: Voice of America

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The current COVID-19 pandemic has affected global mobility both in terms of international mobility restrictions and restrictive measures on internal movement. To better understand how COVID-19 affects global mobility, IOM has developed a global mobility database to gather, map and track data on these restrictive measures impacting movement. The information in this report relies on a compilation of inputs from multiple sources, including from IOM staff in the field, DTM reports on flow monitoring and mobility tracking.

Points of Entry (PoEs):

• As of 26 August 2021, a total of 4,427 PoEs were assessed in 183 C/T/As: 1,103 (25%) airports, 2,596 (59%) land border crossing points and 728 (16%) blue border crossing points.

• Overall, 12 per cent of the assessed PoEs were fully closed (a 2 p.p. decrease compared to the previous reporting period), 29 per cent partially operational (a 3 p.p. increase compared to the previous report) and 52 per cent fully operational (no change compared to the previous reporting period), however the operational status of PoEs varied across IOM Regions and PoE types:

• The IOM Region with the highest share of fully closed PoEs was West and Central Africa (21%, i.e. a 18 p.p. decrease compared to the previous reporting period), followed by South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (18%, i.e. no change compared to the previous reporting period);

• The European Economic Area remained the IOM Region with the highest percentage of fully operational PoEs (84%, no change compared to the previous reporting period), followed by East and Horn of Africa (71%, no change compared to the previous reporting period), Middle East and North Africa (62%; i.e. a 5 p.p. increase compared to the previous report), and South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (54%, a 4 p.p. decrease on a fortnightly basis);

• About 14 per cent of the assessed land border crossing points, globally, were fully closed. For airports and blue border crossing points this was reported as 10 and 5 per cent, respectively, with consistent decreases recorded for land and blue border crossing points compared to the previous reporting period;

• The share of fully operational locations decreased for airports (67%, a 5 p.p. decrease compared to the previous reporting period), while it increased for land border crossings points (45%, i.e. a 2 p.p. increase compared to the previous reporting period) and remained stable for blue border crossing points (54%, i.e. no change compared to the previous reporting period).

Source: International Organization for Migration

New York – The former Co-Chairs of the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, and Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, have expressed their deep concern at the slow pace of redistribution of COVID-19 vaccines from high income to low-income countries.

“The Independent Panel report recommended that high-income countries ensure that at least one billion doses of vaccines available to them were redistributed to 92 low- and middle-income countries by 1 September, and a further one billion doses by mid-2022”, President Sirleaf and Helen Clark said. “Ensuring that all those around the world most vulnerable to the impact of the virus, including healthcare workers, older people and those with significant comorbidities, can be vaccinated quickly is a critical step towards curbing the pandemic.”

The Co-Chairs noted that, to date, 99 million dose donations have been shipped via COVAX, out of which only 89 million have been shipped to the 92 Advance Market Commitment countries – far short of the one billion doses the Independent Panel has called for. “High-income countries have ordered over twice as many doses as are needed for their populations. Now is the time to show solidarity with those who have not yet been able to vaccinate their frontline health workers and most vulnerable populations. Reaching the goal of redistributing one billion doses by 1 September would be a vital step in protecting the five billion people aged 15 and over who live in low- and middle-income countries. The 600 million doses which have already been pledged now need to be delivered with urgency”, the Co-Chairs said.

The Co-Chairs also noted that there needs to be much more rapid action on increasing vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries. “Manufacturing capacity has to be increased and knowledge and technology shared in order to scale up production quickly. This pandemic has shown the global risks of locating the know-how and manufacturing facilities in just a handful of countries.”

“We welcome the announcement that a COVID mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub has been established in South Africa. More such announcements are needed. Low- and middle-income countries must be able to produce more of their own vaccines and thereby help increase in general the amount of vaccine available to the world”, the Co-Chairs said.

For more information, please contact secretariat@ipppr.org

Doses pledged to COVAX: https://www.gavi.org/sites/default/files/covid/covax/COVAX-Dose-Donation-Table.pdf

Source: World Health Organization

ADDIS ABABA – The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 7,721,121, as of yesterday afternoon, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said.

Africa CDC, the specialised healthcare agency of the African Union, said, the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 194,160, and 6,854,726 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease, so far.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa, with 2,757,191 cases, while the northern African country of Morocco reported 849,532, as of yesterday afternoon.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, according to the Africa CDC.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Participants of a G20 Compact with Africa meeting this week assessed Africa’s progress in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. “We are meeting at a pivotal time in the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world,” said Italian prime minister Mario Draghi.

The Compact with Africa is a G20 initiative that promotes macroeconomic, business and financing reforms to attract more private investment in Africa, including in infrastructure.

The conference brought together heads of state of the 12 Compact members and institutional partners, including the African Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It involved strategy discussions around attracting higher inflows of foreign direct investment to Africa and the urgent imperative to develop vaccine manufacture capability on the African continent. Securing the continent’s recovery from the impacts of Covid-19 is one of the Compact’s near-term objectives.

Vaccine inequity was a recurring theme, and heads of state shared reforms that they had undertaken as part of the initiative. Closer international cooperation was urged to address climate change, debt levels and investment shortfalls.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa emphasized that “Africa will not be able to recover until Africans are vaccinated.” President Emmanuel Macron said France had committed to providing $10 million vaccine doses for Africa.

African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said the African Development Bank had committed to investing $5 billion to support vaccine manufacturing across Africa, while World Bank President David Malpass highlighted vaccine financing programs set up in 54 countries, noting that more than half of these are in Africa.

African leaders expressed consensus on the need for vaccine self-sufficiency as a longer-term solution. President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana said there should have been lessons learned from Ebola. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen drew attention to the initiative to develop mRNA technology in Africa across different regional hubs.

African Development Bank President Adesina referred to gains made by Compact members. “We have seen a lot of improvement in public private partnerships and in the cost and ease of doing business but also in terms of the companies that are investing in a lot of African countries.” He also underscored the African Continental Free Trade Area and its expected impacts.

Other constraints discussed included rising levels of debt and restricted fiscal space resulting from the pandemic. “The reduction of liquidity,” hit us hard,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Although Ghana sustained growth through 2020, President Akufo-Addo acknowledged that national debt had risen to 77.1% of GDP.

Many speakers noted that reforms were yielding results. The IMF’s Georgieva said that Compact countries outperform their peers. Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said his country had stabilized its debt through prudent management and opened up its telecom sector for investment.

A virtual session held on the sidelines of the conference provided a forum for German and African private sector representatives to discuss investment opportunities on the continent.

The Conference also included a follow-up session that focused on how to overcome economic, skills and intellectual property constraints to developing domestic mRNA vaccine manufacture across Africa.

Source: African Development Bank

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States is shipping more than two million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Algeria, Ghana and Yemen, the White House said, boosting efforts to combat a third wave of the pandemic across Africa.

The shipments, which a White House official said would land before the end of this week, will be the first donated by the United States to all three countries. They come on the heels of recent deliveries to other countries on the continent, including Nigeria and hard-hit South Africa last month.

Taken from surplus in the US stockpile, 604,800 doses of Johnson & Johnson will go to Algeria, just over 1.2 million doses of Moderna to Ghana, and another 151,200 J&J doses to Yemen, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

All the shipments are being made through Covax, the distributor backed by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance.

President Joe Biden, who took office promising to focus on getting Americans vaccinated after suffering the world’s highest toll from coronavirus, has since expanded his goal to make the United States the vaccine “arsenal” internationally.

The “administration understands that putting an end to this pandemic requires eliminating it around the world,” the White House official said.

Biden has come under fire for authorizing Americans to get booster shots starting in September, but US officials say there is enough capacity, even while maintaining the flow of donations abroad.

The latest shipments will raise the total number of US shots delivered in Africa to more than 25 million, the official said.

Africa is in the grip of a third wave of infections and losing the race to mass vaccination.

Less than two percent of people across the continent are fully vaccinated, with some countries having to destroy unused shots because they lack the health infrastructure to administer them or have met strong vaccine hesitancy.

Ghana, with a population of around 32 million, was initially hailed as a model for coronavirus response, even using drones to deliver vaccines to remote areas. Ghana was also the first country to get vaccines through Covax in February.

However, less than three percent of the population is estimated to have been fully vaccinated. The Covid death toll of 982, reported to the World Health Organization, is believed to be underestimated due to lack of testing.

Algeria, which has close relations with Moscow and was an early recipient of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, is also struggling to get shots in arms. According to WHO figures, there have been 5,063 Covid deaths in the country of 43 million people.

There is a lack of reliable pandemic data from Yemen, already on its knees from war and poverty. The devastated nation of 30 million relies on vaccine donations but also suffers from threadbare healthcare infrastructure.

The White House says about 130 million doses have so far been distributed from the United States to 90 countries.

In addition to dipping into its surplus supplies, the US government has purchased 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses specifically for distribution to the African Union and 92 selected low-income countries. The United States also donated $2 billion to Covax.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK