Confusion and complacency in addressing COVID-19 make the pandemic far from over, but it can be controlled for months with proven public health measures, said the head of the World Health Organization. Health.
“We also want to see the reopening of societies and economies and the recovery of travel and trade,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.
“But right now, intensive care units in many countries are overflowing and people are dying, and it’s totally avoidable.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. But we have many reasons for optimism. The decrease in cases and deaths during the first two months of the year shows that this virus and its variants can be stopped, “he added, saying the transmission was motivated by” confusion, complacency and inconsistency in health measures. public “.
India has overtaken Brazil to become the nation with the second highest total number of infections in the world after the United States as it fights a second massive wave. India has administered about 105 million doses of vaccine among a population of 1.4 billion.
WHO leader at COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, told the news that the pandemic was growing exponentially, with a nine percent increase in cases last week, the seventh consecutive week of increases and an increase in five percent in deaths.
Tedros said that in some countries, despite the continuous transmission, restaurants and nightclubs were full and markets open and crowded with few people taking precautions.
“Some people seem to take the approach that if they are relatively young, it doesn’t matter if they have COVID-19,” he said.
“Africa must expand vaccine production”
Meanwhile, African leaders and international health officials have called for the expansion of coronavirus vaccine manufacturing on the continent, even through the creation of partnerships to increase experience and investment.
Africa has struggled to acquire coronavirus vaccines and imports the vast majority of its medicines and medical equipment, leaving it dependent on overseas supplies.
Its mostly poor nations lag behind in the global coronavirus vaccination race with up to 13 million doses administered so far to the continent’s 1.3 billion people, according to the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Africa CDC) last week.
World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday that it was “morally unconscious and a serious economic success” that only 1.1 per 100 Africans had received a vaccine while in North America. North the rate was over 40 per cent.
“Between a stronger fall and a weaker rebound, Africa will have lost ground to other regions,” he told a virtual conference hosted by the African Union. “Therefore, to drive growth, trade and livelihoods, we need to get vaccines for everyone who needs them.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the African Union’s COVID-19 response champion and leader of the African country most affected by the coronavirus in terms of infections and deaths, said the medium-term strategy should be to expand existing manufacturing facilities in regional centers.
“We must also forge sustainable partnerships with entities from both the developed and developing worlds,” he said.
African countries, he added, could seek guidance from countries such as India and Brazil on how they developed their generic pharmaceutical industries.
Africa now imports 99 percent of all its vaccines, but should aim to reduce imports by about 40 percent by 2040, said John Nkengasong, director of the CDC in Africa.
Okonjo-Iweala said building more manufacturing capacity would require long-term investments, but countries could offer incentives such as reducing tariffs on raw materials.
He encouraged WTO members to find a “pragmatic outcome” to India and South Africa’s proposal to suspend vaccination and other medical patents during the COVID-19 pandemic to speed up technology transfers to capable manufacturers spare parts production.
Tedros said the WHO supports calls for manufacturers to remove barriers to access to critical health products.
“We continue to call on companies to share knowledge,” he told the conference.