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West African health officials race to vaccinate amid spikes


Bangladeshpost
Published : 31 Jul 2021 08:21 PM

AP, Dakar

A resurgence of coronavirus cases in West Africa is hitting the region hard, inundating cemeteries where funeral numbers are rising and hospitals where beds are becoming scarce.

Those visible shifts are also pushing a reluctant population to seek out the vaccines in larger numbers at a time when shipments of doses are arriving from multiple sources after nearly grinding to a halt in recent months.

Thousands of new Covid-19 cases have been reported in the region in the past few weeks amid low vaccination rates and the spread of the delta variant, with some countries seeing their highest numbers since the pandemic began.

Residents who were previously wary of getting shots as conspiracy theories spread online are now lining up by the thousands from Liberia to Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.

“At the beginning, there were people who gave false information, but when people noticed an increase of contaminations and deaths, people understood that only vaccination can save them,” said Bamba Fall, mayor of the Medina municipality in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.

Shortages and delays have caused Africa’s 54 countries to fall far behind wealthier nations in their Covid-19 vaccine rollouts. Some 82 million doses have arrived on the continent to date, though that is just 10% of the number needed to vaccinate 30% of its population by the end of 2021, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization regional director for Africa.

But more shipments are finally rolling in, steering the continent of 1.3 billion people into an “encouraging phase after a bleak June,” Moeti said. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel on vaccine deliveries to Africa, but it must not be snuffed out again.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 210 million people, next month will receive more than 29 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines purchased by the government through the African Union. It’s also expecting 4 million doses of Moderna and almost 700,000 AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX program and from donations by the United States and the United Kingdom, according to Health Minister Osagie Ehanire.

Nigeria’s virus cumulative case count recently topped 172,200, an increase of more than 4,500 cases since July 10. Its seven-day rolling average of daily new cases more than doubled over the past two weeks, from 0.06 new cases per 100,000 people on July 15 to 0.17 new cases per 100,000 people on July 29, according to Johns Hopkins University.