| In a month when soccer fans have been cheering on national teams in stadiums in Europe and Americans are mulling vacations, Africa is battling its most intense wave of coronavirus infections yet and bracing for the next one. The highly contagious delta variant has spread rapidly across the least vaccinated continent, filling hospitals from Johannesburg to Kampala and causing death rates to spike in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. Oxygen is short and health workers are overwhelmed. At times, patients are even dying unnoticed. While a painfully slow vaccination program is expected to pick up in coming months there's little chance of it gathering enough pace to blunt a fourth wave of infections that's expected toward the end of the year. At the heart of Africa's struggle is the hoarding of vaccines by the developed world. That's translated into death, widespread illness and repeated disruption to economic activity in some of the world's poorest nations.  A medical consultant in Tembisa, South Africa. Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/AFP/Getty Images Not only that, it heightens the risk of vaccine-resistant variants developing and spreading across the globe, potentially undoing much of the progress that has been made. So far just 57 million doses of vaccine have been administered across the continent and only 1.3% of its population of 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated. That compares with about 48% of Americans and 52% of the U.K.'s population. While more doses are expected to start arriving from Covax, the vaccine sharing initiative, and the African Union's vaccine acquisition arm as well from donations from the U.S. and elsewhere, there is a long road ahead. "If we have a predictable supply of vaccines, they will be used and then we can break the backbone of this pandemic by the end of next year," John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on a recent conference call. If vaccines are not available the consequences may be dire. "Past next year we will be moving toward endemicity of this virus on our continent and the consequences will be catastrophic," he said. "We don't want to be seen as the continent of Covid."—Antony Sguazzin and Janice Kew | 
↠〖*HDvideo~〗 2020 Skyggen i mit øje PelÃcula Completa En LÃnea released 2020. story: Skyggen i mit øje PelÃcula Completa En LÃnea. ↞◬∺Skyg...
Post a Comment