The Cameroonian Virologist John nkengasong made a very harsh prognosis in March. “Europe is trying to vaccinate 80% of its citizens [va por el 70%]. The United States wants to vaccinate its entire population [está en el 69%]. They will end vaccination, impose travel restrictions and then Africa will become the continent of covid, ”prophesied Nkengasong, director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa. . This Friday, the EU and the US announced the closure of their borders to flights from the south of the African continent, after the detection in Botswana and South Africa of the omicron variant, a new version of the coronavirus with more than 30 very disturbing mutations. Nkengasong was right. The world was on guard. The world stock markets closed in the red.
Barely three out of every hundred people have been fully vaccinated against covid in the poorest countries on the planet, according to the count of the University of Oxford, despite the fact that safe and effective vaccines have been in existence for almost a year. In Africa the number of vaccinated is 7%, although there are countries where practically no one has seen a needle, such as Burundi (0.0025%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (0.06%) and Chad (0.42%). The world situation is a tinderbox, also for the richest. The virus does not stop mutating, by making mistakes when multiplying, so each patient, with up to a billion viruses Inside your body, it increases the chances that more contagious or virulent versions of the pathogen will emerge by chance. Officially there more than three million infected confirmed every week, but the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that in Africa – with a very young population and in many cases asymptomatic and poor means of tracing – it is probably only detected one in seven cases.
The Ethiopian biologist Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, has been disappointed in recent months by denouncing the inequality in vaccination. “Every day six times as many booster doses are given [la tercera inyección en los países ricos] than first doses in low-income countries. It is a scandal that must end now, ”he proclaimed. two weeks ago. “It does not make sense to give booster doses to healthy adults or to vaccinate children when health workers, the elderly and other high-risk groups around the world are still waiting for their first dose,” warned the Ethiopian. “No one is safe until we are all safe,” he said.
Virologist Nicksy Gumede-Moeletsi, from the WHO regional office in Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo), warns that the out-of-control expansion of the coronavirus is the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of new “very worrying” variants, such as omicron. “As long as we continue to have such low vaccination coverage, especially in Africa, we will provide the potential for the variants to spread. Africa needs vaccines ”, argues Gumede-Moeletsi.
Immunization on the continent is hampered by weak health systems and poor logistics to transport drugs under optimal conditions. But much of the problem lies in the hoarding of doses denounced by the WHO by developed countries. The great economic powers have promised to donate some 2,000 million doses, a meager figure to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population with the two-injection regimen. The US has offered 1,100 million injections, the EU, 500 million; and the United Kingdom and China, 100 million each, according to an analysis of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think tank. Promises are already scarce and reality is five times more insufficient than promises: it has only been delivered one in five promised doses, according to the latest data from this reflection group, updated a month ago.
As long as we continue to have such low vaccination coverage, especially in Africa, we will provide the possibility for the variants to spread. “
Nicksy Gumede-Moeletsi, WHO Virologist
After months of controversy over the liberalization of patents for covid vaccines – the World Trade Organization has been unable to reach an agreement due to the opposition of some members, such as the EU, the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland -, WHO launched in June a consortium to try to produce covid vaccines in South Africa. The continent is now dependent on factories in India, China, the US and the EU, turned into contracts with the richest countries.
The South African company Afrigen Biologics, supported by the WHO, will try to copy the vaccine formula of the American company Moderna, criticized by the White House for not giving up his prescription despite having received about 9,000 million euros in aid from the US Government. Afrigen has already recognized that he will not have vaccines at least until fall 2022. Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has even stated that “Two companies are holding the world hostage”, alluding to Moderna and Pfizer, pressured to share the technology of their vaccines, considered the most effective against covid.
The delta variant, first detected in India a year ago, has already changed the course of the pandemic, having mutations that made it twice as contagious than previous versions of the coronavirus. The omicron variant presents several of the delta mutations, added to some unpublished and others already observed in alpha, beta and gamma versions, identified respectively in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. Many of the more than 30 worrisome omicron mutations are associated with increased transmissibility and some ability to escape human defenses – either natural ones or those generated by vaccines – but it will probably take weeks to confirm their true danger.
The solution, in any case, is known, as the virologist Isabel Sola recalls. “It is not a question of doing anything radically new, but of taking the measures already available to limit the transmission of the virus: mask, ventilation, limited contacts, distance … Vaccination also limits the progression of the infection, so it would help to contain it, ”explains Sola, co-director of an experimental vaccine against covid at the National Center for Biotechnology, in Madrid. “To avoid that variants appear, the basic thing is to limit infections, so that the virus does not have the opportunity to multiply and change,” he emphasizes.
It is important that we invest in Africa: identifying new variants there means preventing here “
Iñaki Comas, biologist
The bioinformatician Tulio de Oliveira, director of the South African epidemic response center, leads one of the teams that have detected the omicron variant. Thursday asked the rich countries not to punish the South African region with a border closure. The countries that identify the new variants are those that have invested the most in testing laboratories, not necessarily the places where mutations actually arise. “The world should help South Africa and Africa, not discriminate and isolate them. By protecting and supporting them, we will protect the world, ”De Oliveira implored on his social media. It was unsuccessful. The next day, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the closure of EU borders, despite the fact that a case of the omicron variant had already been detected in Belgium.
The biologist Iñaki Comas applaud the South African scientists. “The important thing is that countries have the capacity to detect these variants and that they communicate it quickly, as South Africa has done. Not to create alarmism, but to increase our vigilance and to be able to assess whether it really is a variant that can change the face of the epidemic, as happened with delta ”, says Comas, from the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia (CSIC). “That is why it is important that we invest in all these countries: because identifying there is preventing here.”
You can write to us [email protected] or follow MATTER on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or subscribe here to our bulletin.
#vaccinated #people #poor #countries #breeding #ground #coronavirus #mutations