Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Greetings to everyone participating in today’s press conference on the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines to priority groups, specifically health-care workers, older people, and adults with preconditions, such diabetes, hypertension, and chronic respiratory conditions.
I am pleased to be joined for this conversation today by Mrs Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo, the President of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association and by Mr Ferdinant Sonyuy, who is the Chair of the Secretariat and Central Africa Regional Representative of Africa Noncommunicable Diseases Network.
First, today marks one year since the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros, described the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. However, the highest alarm WHO can ring under international law, was already sounded much earlier. The Director General declared coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on the 30th of January 2020. That declaration was the signal for all countries to urgently scale-up response measures.
In the coming days, Africa is expected to report more than 4 million COVID-19 cases and about 106,000 lives sadly lost. The continent has experienced a plateau over the past three weeks, at around 70,000 new cases, and there is an upward trend in some countries such as Cameroon and Ethiopia.
The WHO African Region, of Sub-Saharan Africa and Algeria, has now passed a milestone of more than 100,000 health care workers infected with COVID-19.
That means, eleven health-care workers contracting COVID-19 every hour in this pandemic, accounting for 3.5 per cent of all confirmed cases in the Region. This proportion is higher in some countries, such as Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Algeria, where over 10% of all confirmed cases are among health workers.
When health workers fall ill, our communities are affected. So, we must do more to protect them, including on implementing the preventive measures to limit the spread of COVID-19.
With COVID-19 vaccines now reaching the continent in limited numbers, health-care workers must be at the front of the queue.
We urge countries to follow WHO’s guidance and vaccinate health workers first, as well as ensuring continuous access to personal protective equipment, and providing funding for health-care workers investment plans to provide decent salaries, good working conditions and sufficient staffing to cover the workload. This will help to reduce infections among frontline workers and relieve pressures on health systems.
Older people and adults with co-morbidities are also being prioritized for vaccination because they have a higher risk of severe illness and death when infected with COVID-19. Available data indicates for example, that more than a third of COVID-19 deaths in African countries have been among people aged 65 years and above, whereas they constitute a much lower percentage of cases.
This reminds us that access to treatment, and action to prevent, these mainly chronic noncommunicable diseases, needs much more investment and action in most countries in the African Region, and we can’t make strict separations between infectious and chronic diseases, and really just need to speed up progress towards Universal Health Coverage.
WHO’s guidance is to prioritize the most affected population sub-groups in line with the local epidemiology, and countries have defined and included these groups in their National Deployment and Vaccination Plans.
The COVAX shipments continue at a rapid pace, and as of yesterday, almost 14.8 million doses have been delivered to 22 African countries. This is great news. Nineteen African countries have now started vaccination campaigns, and through COVAX more than 518,000 doses have been administered.
We are also supporting countries to monitor the circulation of COVID-19 variants, with recent confirmation of the B.1.351 (which was first identified in South Africa) in Cameroon, Malawi, Namibia, Eswatini and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This variant has now been reported in 15 African countries, while the variant first identified in the UK) has been reported in 12 African countries.
In closing, I want to give a shout out to health care workers for your leadership, for your dedication and for your sacrifice for the sake of the health of everybody in your countries.
I’d like to thank you all for having joined us look forward to a very good conversation today.