The “acute phase” of the Covid-19 pandemic will end this year if the target of 70% of the world’s population vaccinated is reached, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
“We expect an end to the acute phase of the pandemic this year, on the condition of course that 70% of the world’s population is vaccinated by the middle of the year, around June or July,” he told the press Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visiting South Africa.
“If so, the acute phase can truly end, and that’s what we expect. It’s in our hands. It’s not a matter of luck, it’s a matter of choice,” he added.
The WHO chief was visiting the labs of the Cape Town-based biotech company Afrigen, which made the first messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19 in Africa.
Developed from the sequencing of the publicly available genetic code from the Moderna laboratory, this vaccine will be ready for clinical trials in November, and its registration is scheduled for 2024.
“This vaccine will be more suitable for the settings in which it will be used, with fewer storage constraints and at a lower price,” Tedros said.
The Afrigen project is supported by the WHO and the international mechanism Covax for access to vaccines.
The WHO “is committed to supporting the development of local manufacturing (of vaccines) in Africa and elsewhere in the world in order to improve health security” on all continents, Tedros said.
Belgian politician Meryame Kitir, then a simple member of the opposition, in Brussels on October 22, 2016.
© BELGA – NICOLAS MAETERLINCK
Visiting Cape Town with Mr. Tedros, the Belgian Minister for Development Cooperation, Meryame Kitir, criticized the slowness of discussions with a view to obtaining a regime derogating from patent law on vaccines.
“Vaccines should be a public good, but after two years of a pandemic (…) we have made no progress” in these discussions, she regretted.
The vaccination rate in Africa (11% of the population) is the lowest in the world. The continent must “multiply the vaccination rate” against Covid sixfold to hope to reach the target of 70% vaccination coverage set for the end of the first half of 2022, according to WHO Africa.
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