Pandemic-Health
Covid-19: Africa Vaccine Rollout off to a Slow Start By Peter Mwai
AFRICA HAS NOW RECORDED over 100,000 but many others will have to wait until later in the Covid-19 deaths and there is growing concern year for stocks to arrive. over delays in rolling out vaccination programmes. The first doses distributed under the Covax Some countries such as South Africa and see page 52 Zimbabwe have begun vaccination programmes,
The ministry said health workers are trying to trace and isolate the contacts of the Ebola cases and will open a treatment centre in Goueke, which is less than an hour’s drive from Nzerekore. The authorities have also asked the World Health Organization (WHO) for Ebola vaccines, it said. The new vaccines have greatly improved survival rates in recent years. “It’s a huge concern to see the resurgence of Ebola in Guinea, a country that has already suffered so much from the disease,” the WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, was quoted as saying in a statement. Given how close the new outbreak is to the border, the WHO is working with health authorities
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in Liberia and Sierra Leone to beef up surveillance and testing capacities, the statement said. The vaccines and improved treatments helped efforts to end the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, which was declared over in Democratic Republic of Congo last June after nearly two years and more than 2,200 deaths. But on Sunday, DRC reported a fourth new case of Ebola in North Kivu province, where a resurgence of the virus was announced on Feb. 7th. www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-guinea/ guinea-reports-first-ebola-cases-since-2016including-three-deaths-idUSKBN2AE08L Image credit: euractiv.com DAWN
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