The warning comes as the world faces a new surge in cases driven by the highly infectious omicron variant. Health officials in South Africa, which first announced the variant, say early data indicate it causes less severe illness and shorter, less intensive hospital stays. But some richer countries have rushed to allow booster vaccine doses in response, even as less than 8% of Africa’s population has received two doses. “We will never get out of this if we don’t work together as one world,” Flavia Senkubuge, president of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, told reporters at the WHO briefing. The WHO Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, pushed back against any suggestion that African nations are allowing large numbers of vaccine doses to go to waste amid poor infrastructure and vaccine hesitancy.

Source: The North Africa Journal December 14, 2021 12:57 UTC