Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique was the country with the highest growth of Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks in Africa, a continent facing a “perfect storm” due to the Delta variant, warned today the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
In the Tony Blair Institute’s “Africa’s Perfect Storm” study on the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa, the authors say the end of June marked the seventh consecutive week of exponential growth in cases across Africa, which have increased almost 200% in June.
Of the countries that registered growth in the last two weeks, Mozambique was the worst, with an increase of 172%, followed by Rwanda (138%), Malawi (110%), Nigeria (86%) per cent), Ghana (51% ) and South Africa (38%).
Mortality also increased in the same period, especially in Liberia (380%), Rwanda (217%), Kenya (202%) and Mozambique (186%).
At this speed and scale, they estimate, the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa will be worse than the previous one recorded in January, risking overburdening health systems.
“There is now an absolutely urgent and vital need for the world to increase the supply of vaccines to Africa. We know all the reasons why the promised vaccines have not been delivered. But the longer this unacceptable situation persists, not just Africa but the whole world will be at risk,” says Blair in the preface to the study published today.
In addition to the need to increase imports of vaccines, including outside the World Health Organisation’s Covax program, Blair said African governments need to step up campaigns to encourage populations to accept immunisation.
“Africa’s government campaigns to inform their populations about vaccines must be accompanied by greater clarity and coordination from vaccine-rich countries, whose confusing messages about the risks of approved vaccines and the lack of concerted regulatory responses have fanned the flames of hesitation all over the world,” he emphasizes.
In the study, the authors make a series of recommendations for African governments to make in response to the increase in cases, increased mortality and lack of vaccines, including carrying out large-scale trials, implementing public health measures and increasing local production. of medical equipment.
More than 36,000 daily cases have been registered in the past seven days, a record on the continent since the start of the pandemic, according to an AFP count from official reports.
Among countries with more than 1,000 daily infections, the main increases were observed in Zimbabwe, Tunisia and South Africa, where more than half of the new cases detected on the continent are concentrated.
Africa has registered 146,441 deaths due to Covid-19, totaling 5,669,873 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data released this Monday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the African Union (Africa CDC).
According to the regional organisation, Africa also has 4,924,099 recoveries since the first case recorded on the continent, in Egypt, on February 14, 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused at least 3,980,935 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 183.7 million cases of infection by the coronavirus, according to the most recent balance made by the agency France Presse.
In Portugal, since the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, 17,117 people have died and 890,571 cases of infection have been registered, according to the Directorate-General for Health.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India or South Africa.
