Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Greetings to our journalist colleagues, bonjour à tous et bienvenue.
Thanks for joining us for this press conference and also welcome to everyone who is watching online. So, today we are going to look at access to vaccines and the circulation of variants on the African continent.
I am very pleased to be joined for this conversation by Ms Aurélia Nguyen, the Managing Director at the Office of the COVAX Facility, a warm welcome to you, Ms Nguyen, and by Professor Tulio de Oliveira, the Director of the Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Welcome again, Prof. A warm welcome to you both. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Africa has just marked its worst pandemic week ever, surpassing the second wave peak. During the week which ended on the 4th of July, there were more than 251 000 cases – a 20 percent increase over the previous week and a 12 percent jump over the January peak.
A few weeks ago, we projected this milestone would be reached shortly and it really brings me no joy to have been right.
In total on the continent, there have now been almost 5.7 million COVID-19 cases and 146,000 people sadly have lost their lives.
New cases have increased for the seventh week running. For Africa, the worst is yet to come as the fast moving third wave continues to gain speed and new ground in countries. The end to this, is still going to be several weeks away. Cases are doubling now every 18 days compared to 21 days a week ago.
Sixteen African countries are now in resurgence, with Malawi and Senegal added this week, and the Delta variant has been detected in 10 of these countries.
The continent still struggles to gather the information needed. The identification of which variants are circulating in a community has an immediate value to national response teams, to inform adjustments to public health and social measures including sometimes decisions on vaccines.
Some countries have yet to build sequencing capacities to detect variants, and even countries that are doing sequencing, are hitting against barriers of limited capacity and resources.
We can do more to fill these critical information gaps with the resources at hand. In the context of increasing cases, deaths and limited resources, we are encouraging African countries to integrate PCR screening assays that can detect variants, as a complementary approach to sequencing. Assays are easy to use, fast and can be done using PCR equipment that’s already available in all African countries. And while assays will provide information on which variants are in countries, sequencing is still very important to understand further mutations.
Turning then to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout: we are seeing some signs of hope.
After coming to a virtual halt in early June, vaccine shipments are gathering momentum. In the last two weeks more than 1.6 million doses have been delivered to Africa through the COVAX Facility. Thanks to France another 300 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines are expected today in Kenya and Somalia, and donations from Sweden and Norway to additional countries are currently being finalized.
COVAX has been working tirelessly to clinch dose-sharing pledges and procurement deals with manufacturers to ensure Africans get their vaccines. We expect more than 20 million doses of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to arrive from the United States soon through COVAX, in coordination with the African Union. Other significant donations are expected in the coming days from more partners, and Ms Nguyen will tell us all about this.
There is still a long way to go. So far, 50 million doses have been administered in Africa, accounting for just 1.6% of doses globally. Sixteen million, or less than 2%, of Africans are now fully vaccinated. This means that hundreds of millions of people are still vulnerable to infection and also to severe illness I might add.
With much larger deliveries expected to be arriving in July and August, as a Region, we must use this time to prepare to rapidly expand the rollout. Governments and partners can do this by planning to expand vaccination sites, improving cold chain capacities beyond capital cities, sensitizing communities to boost vaccine confidence and demand, and ensuring operational funding is ready to go when it is needed.
As WHO, we are supporting countries to document the lessons learned, to identify programmatic barriers, and to scale-up good practices to make the most of every dose of vaccine.
So, I look forward very much to our conversation today and thank you once again for having joined us.