Category: Medical

The devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal and other parts of the country are the beginnings of South Africa feeling the effects of climate change, says Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

Addressing reporters on Tuesday, the Minister said the torrential rain experienced in the province last week were the worst the country had ever experienced.

On Monday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Cabinet’s decision to declare a National State of Disaster. The declaration of the National State of Disaster takes into account the need to augment existing measures undertaken by organs of state to deal with the national disaster and allows the mobilisation of resources to support the various interventions.

The declaration is in terms of Section 27(1) of the Disaster Management Act, 2002 (Act No. 57 of 2002) due to the magnitude and severity of the damage caused by the severe weather events in various municipal areas of KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and other provinces.

“In 24 hours, the province experienced 300 and 400 millimetres of rain.

“In Durban for instance in February, which is the wettest month, we normally get about 102 millimetres of rain in the whole month,” said the Minister.

This, she said, confirmed that “climate change is here”.

"The scientists have been telling us that the eastern part of the country is going to be wetter and will have frequent floods. The western part of the country is going to be drier and we will have frequent droughts. And maybe we thought it's something that is still in the distant future.

“But if we look at what has just happened over the last five years, in KwaZulu-Natal we had floods in 2018, in 2020 and we have had floods now in 2022. Of course each flood gets worse than the previous one. So clearly, climate change is with us and we are beginning to feel the effects of it.”

Extending condolences to all those who lost their loved ones, the Minister said she hoped that those who have missing loved ones will be found soon saying "it is very important for us to lay our love ones to rest and know where they are resting".

She said government was doing all in its might to assist in finding those who are still missing.

Above the 440 confirmed lost lives, the floods left 40 000 people homeless when 4 000 homes were destroyed.

She said government was encouraged by the prevailing spirit of ubuntu.

"We'd like to thank the individual citizens, NGOs, private sector companies, traditional leaders, who have rallied to comfort those affected," she said.

The floods have resulted in the loss of human life and damage to infrastructure.

“The Eastern Cape has also had floods and loss of life and also destruction of infrastructure. Other provinces are experiencing heavier rains than normal. But also the impact of these floods [is] way beyond the province (KwaZulu-Natal), and so it became very important that the national government comes on board.”

She said classification from a provincial to a national disaster allows for the coordination and rallying of the entire nation, government and also international support.

She said it strengthens the commitment of national government departments to fulfil its role in providing relief recovery and rehabilitation to affected communities.

"But that does not mean that the province and the local government must now relax. They must still do what they need to do. It signals that the government as a whole intends to deal with the impact of this severe weather in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and other provinces in a holistic manner through an integrated and coordinated approach across the spheres of government.

Through the District Development Model, she said, "all three spheres of government must... use their budgets in an integrated [manner].

"In dealing with this disaster, that is what is going to happen. Nobody should build back in the riverbanks... in flood plains. It means [that] as we build back, we should build back better. We must strengthen institutional arrangements to ensure that we assist and protect the public as the law says, provide relief to the public, protect property, prevent and combat any disruption to life in a destructive nature and other effects of this disaster. So this has been gazetted and therefore, we will be now working accordingly.

Contingency arrangements

She called on all organs of state, the private sector and civil society to further increase support to existing structures to implement contingency arrangements and ensure that measures are put in place to effectively deal with the impact of the disaster.

Ministers, Premiers, MECs and Mayors will also provide regular updates to the nation on interventions being undertaken.

National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) head Dr Mmaphaka Tau said eight operational task teams have been set-up to deal with the effects of the floods.

They are:

Health and Medical Services team - Department of Health.

Humanitarian Relief task team - Department of Social Development

Integrated flood risks and early warnings - NDMC

Food and nutrition task team - Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development

Communications and community mobilisation task team - Government Communication and Information Service.

Infrastructure intervention task teams - Department of Public Works and infrastructure with Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent.

Security and Emergency Search and Rescue task team - South African Police Service.

Funding and monitoring and evaluation task teams - National Treasury with Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation.

He said these teams were being activated.

"They will start to function effectively. We have come up with a model that will ensure that they are replicated at provincial and municipal level," he said.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

The World Health Organization says Africa’s COVID-19 vaccinations rose by 15% between January and February, as several countries embarked on mass inoculation drives to expand coverage and protect populations from the pandemic.

Zimbabwe’s government says it is launching a "national vaccination blitz" targeting those who have not yet been vaccinated in a country where resistance to the shots has been an issue since the program started last year. The drive come amid government concern over rising COVID-19 cases.

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said in a statement that the increase in COVID-19 vaccinations on the continent was driven mainly by campaigns in populous countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria.

Dr. Thierno Balde, the WHO Africa regional COVID-19 incident manager, he says the continent must remain vigilant.

“We have seen what is happening around, in China, and the risk of also having new imitations, new variants still possible. We really need to continue to safeguard our population by taking the vaccine by not relaxing totally. The situation might change. So we really need to continue adapting some of these social measures and also to get vaccination,” Balde said.

The WHO said to boost African COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, it and other organizations were supporting mass vaccination drives in at least 10 priority countries to reach 100 million people by the end of next month.

Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu, Zimbabwe’s acting information minister, said his country would not be left behind.

“Regarding the vaccination program, as of 15 March, 2022, a total of 159,628 third doses have been administered to date. The national vaccination blitz campaign will kick off on Monday, 21 March, 2022, and [the] government is urging those that have not yet been vaccinated to take advantage of this exercise to do so,” Ndlovu said.

A number of Zimbabweans have refused vaccination, saying they do not trust the mainly donated Chinese-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines. The country has lately recorded a rise in new infections – now cumulatively at 244,012 with 5,418 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak.

Dr. Cleophas Chimbetete, president of Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians, attributes that to the recent lifting of restrictive measures, such as lockdowns. He says, however, it is not time to panic, just to enforce WHO protocols, such masking and social distancing.

“After relaxing measures, it is expected that cases will slightly go up. But I also think that it is too early to make any meaningful conclusions, I think it is just an opportunity for us to strengthen our preventative measures and continue highlighting to the rest of the population that COVID is still with us. The good news, though, is that severe cases have not gone up. What we need to do is to continue to get vaccinated and what is important is that the government should – as it is doing – is monitor these numbers. There is no cause for alarm or cause for us to introduce new measures,” Chimbetete said.

Zimbabwe had a target of vaccinating at least 10 million people by the end of last year, a figure that some say was difficult to reach given the scarcity of resources and hesitance. It has yet to announce when it plans to achieve herd immunity.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) held a panel discussion on Thursday on ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights, said at the event that as the world entered the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the international community stood at a crossroads and needed to “choose the right path.”

“The world has been profoundly fortunate to have had effective COVID-19 vaccines developed at an unprecedented pace. Science has saved millions of lives and livelihoods. But we have failed to administer the vaccines in a fair and equitable manner,” she said.

Emphasizing that the “pandemic’s finish line is still out of sight,” Bachelet said that “a false narrative that it may be over is arising in some countries with high vaccination rates, and where the effects of the Omicron variant have been relatively mild.”

“Yet, low vaccination rates in many countries continue to create ideal conditions for new variants to emerge,” she noted. “So they pose a threat to everyone.”

Bachelet stressed that “delayed vaccination may mean a lost decade for development…Countries will become less resilient to fresh crises and shocks. And discontent at the human rights consequences of pandemic-related measures has the potential to escalate societal tensions and violence, which are growing around the world.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said during the panel discussion that while more than six million people had lost their lives to COVID-19, these figures seriously underrepresented the reality of this crisis.

“While almost ten billion vaccine doses had been administered around the globe, their distribution told a story of inequality: almost 70 percent of vaccinations were in high income countries, while less than 14 percent of people in low-income countries had received a single dose,” he said.

Countries with high vaccination rates are reopening, while others with low vaccination rates and low testing rates have been left behind, and the result is more than 60,000 deaths per week along with an increased risk of the emergence of new virus variants, he warned.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

As demand for COVID-19 vaccines collapses in many areas of the U.S., states are scrambling to use stockpiles of doses before they expire and have to be added to the millions that have already gone to waste.

From some of the least vaccinated states, like Indiana and North Dakota, to some of the most vaccinated states, like New Jersey and Vermont, public health departments are shuffling doses around in the hopes of finding providers that can use them.

State health departments told The Associated Press they have tracked millions of doses that went to waste, including ones that expired, were in a multi-dose vial that couldn't be used completely or had to be tossed for some other reason like temperature issues or broken vials.

Nearly 1.5 million doses in Michigan, 1.45 million in North Carolina, 1 million in Illinois and almost 725,000 doses in Washington couldn't be used.

The percentage of wasted doses in California is only about 1.8%, but in a state that has received 84 million doses and administered more than 71 million of them, that equates to roughly 1.4 million doses. Providers there are asked to keep doses until they expire, then properly dispose of them, the California Department of Public Health said.

The national rate of wasted doses is about 9.5% of the more than 687 million doses that have been delivered as of late February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. That equates to about 65 million doses.

The problem is not unique to the U.S. More than a million doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine expired this week in Guatemala, because nobody wanted to take the shot.

Vaccination program managers say that tossing out doses is inevitable in any inoculation campaign because of the difficulty in aligning supply and demand for a product with a limited shelf life.

But the coronavirus pandemic has killed nearly 6 million people and shattered economies across the globe, and every dose that goes to waste feels like a missed opportunity considering how successful the vaccines are in preventing death and serious disease.

It also comes only about a year after people desperate to get the vaccine attempted to jump in line to get ahead of those deemed higher priority. Hospital board members, their trustees and donors around the U.S. got early access or offers for vaccinations, raising complaints about favoritism and inequity at a time when the developing world had virtually no doses.

And many poorer nations still have low vaccine rates, including 13 countries in Africa with less than 5% of their population fully vaccinated. T hey are plagued by unpredictable deliveries, weak health care systems, vaccine hesitancy and some supply issues, although health officials say inventory is markedly stronger than earlier in the pandemic.

In fact, supplies are so strong that the CDC now advises doctors that it's OK to discard doses if it means opening up the standard multi-dose vials to vaccinate a single person and the rest has to be tossed.

"Pivoting to what's happening now, you have much more production and distribution to low-income countries," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who directs the COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Program at the Task Force for Global Health in Decatur, Georgia. "The issue of some stockpiles in the U.S., Germany and Japan, that are not redistributed to sub-Saharan Africa, it's less of an acute problem now because vaccine production and distribution is in high-gear right now serving those low-income countries."

The Department of Health and Human Services also said that redistributing states' excess doses to other nations is not feasible because of the difficulty in transporting the shots, which must remain cold, in addition to not being cost effective because of the relatively small number concentrated at sites.

Of the more than 687 million doses sent to states, 550 million to 600 million have been administered, HHS said Monday. The vaccines authorized in the U.S., made by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, can last for up to about six months from the time of manufacture.

A senior HHS official familiar with vaccine distribution plans took issue with the word "wastage," saying it implies mismanagement when states are effectively overseeing their inventories. The CDC, however, uses the term "wastage" on its website and asks states to report their numbers.

The CDC said Thursday that the federal government, jurisdictions and vaccine providers have a strong partnership to get as many people vaccinated as possible while reducing vaccine wastage, and that the likelihood of leaving unused doses in a vial may increase as demand slows, even when providers continue to follow best practices to use every dose possible.

The fading demand comes as the pandemic itself wanes in the U.S. On Thursday, the CDC said about 90% of the U.S. population lives in counties where the risk of coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat — meaning residents don't need to wear masks in most indoor settings. That was up from 70% last week.

The average number of Americans getting their first shot is down to about 70,000 a day, the lowest point since the U.S. vaccination campaign began in December 2020. About 76% of the U.S. population has received at least one shot and roughly 65% of all Americans are fully vaccinated.

With demand so low, states will undoubtedly be confronted with more waste in the months ahead, although they will benefit from any booster expansions.

Idaho, for example, has 230,000 doses on hand but is only averaging fewer than 2,000 doses administered a week.

Oregon's vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, but the health authority there said last week that they have "significant excess vaccine on hand" because of the recent drop in demand. The state is trying to use up as many of the 716,000 doses in its inventory as possible.

Rhode Island has the highest percentage of residents who are fully vaccinated in the nation, at slightly more than 80%, but the health department reported having 137,000 doses on hand last week. Health officials say they need them for a big push to increase the vaccination rate for booster doses.

Health officials in some states have developed "matchmaker" programs to connect vaccine providers with excess doses with providers seeking doses. Many said they're attempting to redistribute doses with expiration dates that are quickly approaching. New Jersey has a task force that has transferred more than 600,000 doses around the state since June. West Virginia has offered to transfer Pfizer adult doses to nearby states.

Immunization managers have been asking for single-dose vials, especially for pediatricians, but it may not work for manufacturers to package it that way yet, said Claire Hannan, executive director at the Association of Immunization Managers. She said wasting vaccine "just can't be an issue."

"We tell this to providers, but the most important thing is getting people vaccinated. And that's hard when the demand goes down. You don't have constant flow," she said. "But that's just a necessary evil I guess."

HHS said states are ordering prudently, paralleling the drop in demand. The minimum order for Pfizer used to be nearly 1,200 doses but now it's 100, and Moderna reduced the number of doses per vial, the agency said.

"Given what we've seen in terms of the number of people still unvaccinated, I do think finding any way to get the shot in arms, even at the expense of potential wastage, is still important," said Katie Greene, an assistant research director at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.

Source: Voice of America

Brazzaville, 24 February 2022 – One year since the COVAX Facility delivered the first COVID-19 vaccines to Africa, around 400 million doses have been administered – the region’s largest ever vaccine rollout in a single year. However, vaccination rates in the continent are the lowest in the world. To help bolster uptake, World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and partners are supporting mass vaccination campaigns in 10 priority countries to reach 100 million people by the end of April 2022.

“A year since the first COVAX vaccine shipments, Africa has administered nearly 400 million doses. That’s the continent’s most massive vaccine rollout for a single disease in a single year. While this is a big step forward, we need a quantum leap,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “Mass vaccination drives are one tactic which is enabling countries to speed up their rollout.”

After a fitful start following the first COVAX vaccine shipments on 24 February 2021, Africa now has a steady supply of vaccines. Ninety per cent of the total COVAX deliveries to date have been in the last six months. COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the continent have increased by more than 100% from November 2021 to January 2022, compared with the previous three months.

COVAX deliveries account for almost two-thirds of the more than 680 million doses delivered to Africa in the past year. The African Union’s Africa Vaccines Acquisition Trust has shipped about 6% of the doses and bilateral deals account for the rest.

“Today marks an important milestone in COVAX’s journey. Over the course of one year, working closely with governments and partners, COVAX has shipped over 430 million doses to 50 African countries. The global vaccine equity gap may be closing, but there remains so much work to be done. In the months ahead, COVAX looks forward to supporting countries further, providing targeted and tailored support where needed and ensuring supply matches countries’ needs as they work towards their vaccination targets,” said Aurélia Nguyen, Managing Director of the Office of the COVAX Facility.

Of the 20 priority countries identified by WHO for intensified support, 10 countries are conducting the mass vaccination campaigns in a range of urban settings such as shopping centres and markets, as well as in hard-to-reach rural communities. Countries are reporting a significant rise in people vaccinated. During its two-week campaign in early February, Kenya tripled the number of vaccines it administered, compared with the two weeks prior to the start of the campaign. In Guinea Bissau around 125 000 doses were administered during a two-week campaign in February, in comparison with 11 000 in the whole of January.

UNICEF has delivered around three-quarters of all COVID-19 doses to the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Mohamed Fall, Regional Director for the world’s leading children’s agency, said, “To truly achieve vaccine equity for Africa three things need to happen: Richer countries must contribute more funding to get vaccines into arms, including by recruiting and training community healthcare workers; partners need to ensure timely and reliable delivery of vaccines; and we need to increase the innovative ways we’re seeing in bringing vaccines to the people as opposed to people to the vaccines. Governments must also continue to invest in their health systems to make them more resilient to health crises.”

So far, only 13% of Africans are fully vaccinated. Eighteen countries have vaccinated less than 10% of their population and three have vaccinated less than 1%. Twenty-nine countries have used less than 50% of their vaccine stock.

High-risk populations also remain critically underserved by vaccination programmes. In 27 countries reporting data on health worker vaccination, 33% of their health work force is fully vaccinated, and in 24 African countries reporting data on vaccination of older people, only 21% of adults over 50 years are fully vaccinated. Just 11% of people with comorbidities are fully vaccinated in 20 countries reporting that data.

WHO, UNICEF, Gavi, the vaccine alliance, and other international and local partners are supporting countries to scale up COVID-19 vaccination and have deployed 66 experts to 18 priority countries to form country support teams, with several experts on their way to two more countries.

WHO, UNICEF and other partners’ experts are working under the leadership of the ministries of health to strengthen partner coordination, logistical planning, including microplanning, closing the funding gap, tracking adverse events following immunization, as well as the management of data on vaccination uptake and vaccine stock while engaging and empowering communities.

WHO held a virtual press conference today led by Dr Phionah Atuhebwe, New Vaccines Introduction Officer, WHO Regional Office for Africa. She was joined by Ms Aurélia Nguyen, Managing Director, Office of the COVAX Facility, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Mr Maksim Fazlitdinov, Social and Behavioural Specialist, UNICEF Rwanda.

Also on hand from the WHO Regional Office for Africa to respond to questions was Dr Thierno Balde, Regional COVID-19 Incident Manager.

Source: UN Children's Fund