At the current rate, Africa will only have 70% of vaccinated in 2024, according to the WHO

A vaccination rate that is still too slow. Africa could not reach the target of 70% vaccinated against Covid-19 until August 2024, according to projections revealed on Tuesday by the WHO, which again called for an acceleration of vaccination campaigns for ” save a lot of lives ”.

The 70% mark is considered essential to control the pandemic, recalled the Africa regional office of the World Health Organization during its regular online press briefing. However, as of December 13, only 20 African countries had vaccinated at least 10% of their population, only 6 had reached 40% of vaccinated and only two (Mauritius and Seychelles) were at 70%.

“We can still save a lot of lives if we pick up the pace”

“At the current rate, the WHO estimates that it will be necessary to wait until May 2022 to have vaccination coverage in Africa of 40% and August 2024 to reach 70%,” said WHO-Africa in a press release. “But we can still save a lot of lives if we accelerate the pace of vaccination in early 2022,” said its director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti.

WHO-Africa also specified that an 83% surge of new cases of Covid-19 had been recorded during the past week, carried in particular by the new variant Omicron, detected for the first time on November 24 in Africa. from South.

Africa is experiencing a fourth wave of the epidemic

“The number of new cases is doubling every five days, the fastest rate recorded since the start of the year,” she said, continuing to see “fewer deaths” than in previous epidemic outbreaks. “The number of deaths has even decreased by 19% compared to the previous week,” adds the organization.

“We believe, with cautious optimism, that the number of deaths and severe cases will remain low during this wave, but the slow pace of vaccination in Africa means that it will be much higher than it should,” said Dr Moeti. In total, more than 2,700 cases of Omicron have been reported in 59 countries around the world, including 11 African countries accounting for 33% of the global number of cases, according to the WHO.