Day: July 3, 2021

GENEVA – The World Health Organization is calling for urgent action to stem the rapid spread of COVID-19 across Africa, which is being fueled by a surge of more contagious variants of the disease.

Latest reports say COVID-19 cases in Africa have been rising by 25% every week for the past six weeks, bringing reported cases there to more than 5.4 million, including 141,000 deaths.

WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, warns the rampant spread of the more contagious alpha, beta, and delta variants is raising the pandemic threat across the continent to a new level.

“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we have seen before,” said Moeti. “Cases are doubling every three weeks, compared to every four weeks at the start of the second wave. Almost 202,000 cases were reported in the past week and the continent is on the verge of exceeding its worst week ever in this pandemic.”

In the same period, WHO reports deaths have risen by 15% across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000. The jump is largely due to the highly transmissible coronavirus variants, which have spread to dozens of countries. The most contagious delta variant has been found in 16 countries. It reportedly has become the dominant strain in South Africa.

Moeti says more people are falling ill and requiring hospitalization, even people younger than 45 years. She says evidence is growing that the delta variant is causing longer and more severe illness.

With Africa’s lack of life-saving vaccines, Moeti says it is important for people to practice public health measures, such as wearing masks, social distancing, and frequent handwashing to prevent the disease from spreading.

“With WHO’s guidance, countries are taking action to curb the rise in cases,” said Moeti. “All countries in resurgence in the region have put limits on people gathering to help with physical distancing. …They are using nuanced, risk-based approaches, informed by the local epidemiology, in an effort to avoid nationwide lockdowns that we know cause great harm to livelihoods, particularly for low-income households.”

Vaccines are proving highly effective against the COVID-19 variants and in ending devastating surges of severe cases of the disease. They are widely available in the world’s richest countries, but not Africa.

Moeti is urgently appealing to countries to share their excess doses to help plug the continent’s vaccine gap, saying Africa must not be left languishing in the throes of its worst wave yet.

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The Angolan Head of State, João Lourenço, congratulated the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, on his country’s Independence Day, 4th of July.

In the congratulatory message, to which Angop had access, João Lourenço extols the exemplary journey made by the United States of America in more than two centuries, “in which they achieved great conquests, in all levels of national life, projecting the Nation in the world as an unavoidable reference in political, economic, scientific and technological terms”.

The Angolan statesman emphasizes that the two countries and governments have made great efforts towards the continuous strengthening of friendship and bilateral cooperation relations.

“For this reason, I want to express our conviction that we are on the right path, which will lead to the construction of solid foundations on which important joint achievements will be built, with mutual benefits”, reads the message.

João Lourenço congratulated – on his own behalf and on behalf of the Angolan Executive – President Joe Biden, the American people and Government on the celebration of the 245th anniversary of the Independence of the United States of America.

“Please accept my wishes for personal well-being, good health and prosperity for the people of the US,” wrote the Angolan President.

In 2010, Angola and the United States signed a strategic partnership and cooperation agreement in various fields, with emphasis on trade, finance, energy, manufacturing industry, security, health and justice.

Angola exports oil and diamonds to the United States and buys from that country food and equipment for the oil sector, as well as machineries.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Americans who say they will definitely not get vaccinated against COVID-19 are overwhelmingly white and Republican, according to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Meanwhile, the group that plans to wait and watch for problems is disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

The United States is falling just short of President Joe Biden’s goal of having 70% of Americans receive at least one dose of vaccine by July 4.

While about one-third of Americans have not been immunized against COVID-19, their reasons and intentions break down largely along racial and political lines. Hard no

Only 14% of Americans say they will definitely not get vaccinated. But this group is 69% white, compared with 7% Black and 12% Hispanic. Republicans make up 58% of this group, while Democrats account for 18%.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen political divides in attitudes towards COVID itself, not just the vaccines,” said Liz Hamel, director of KFF’s Public Opinion and Survey Research program.

For example, she said, “believing that the media has exaggerated the seriousness of the pandemic — that’s something that we heard President [Donald] Trump saying when he was in office. It’s something that Republicans are more likely to agree with than Democrats. And people who believe that the pandemic has been exaggerated are much less likely to say they want to get the vaccine.”

More than half of those who said they would not get vaccinated said they did not need it. Maybe later

On the other hand, KFF polling found that 10% of respondents said that they would “wait and see” before getting the shots.

The “wait and see” group is disproportionately Black (18%) and Hispanic (22%), compared with the “definitely not” group, where they make up 7% and 12%, respectively.

While the “definitely not” group is basically unchanged, the “wait and see” group has shrunk to a quarter of the size it was when vaccines began rolling out in December, as more and more people have gotten their shots.

But the number of people who still plan to wait and see seems to be leveling off. After big drops during the first couple of months of vaccine rollout, the “wait and see” group has lost just a few percentage points each month over the past several months.

While those who remain unvaccinated are increasingly hard to reach, experts say there are still opportunities to get more shots in arms.

Safety

The biggest reasons for hesitancy in all groups are the novelty of the vaccines and concerns about side effects.

All the vaccines currently in use are under emergency authorizations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has lower safety requirements than full FDA approval. About half of the “wait and see” group told KFF pollsters that they would be more likely to get the shots if they were FDA approved.

Health officials are working with trusted faith and community leaders, business owners, and others in communities with low vaccination rates. “We need these individuals to encourage their peers to accept the vaccine,” said Rupali Limaye, head of behavioral and implementation science at the Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center.

Some governments and businesses are offering incentives for people to get their shots, from free beer to million-dollar lotteries.

“Some people may be nudged by a free doughnut,” Limaye said. “Others may require something larger, such as a chance for a college scholarship, for example.”

Access is still an issue for some of the unvaccinated. In the KFF poll, 3% of people still said they planned to get vaccinated “as soon as possible.”

Reaching this group may not sound like much of a gain, but “even an increase of one to two percent of vaccine coverage at the state level could really limit outbreaks,” Limaye said.

Low-wage workers may be worried about finding time to schedule shots or recover from side effects.

Health officials could target Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine for this group, Limaye said.

Employers could offer vaccines on the job, she added, and “they can also give employees time off to make sure that they can get the vaccine.”

These measures may help motivate the “wait and see” group, KFF’s Hamel said.

“There still is a lot of work to do in convincing those potentially convertible people before really worrying about how to convince people who … are really strongly against getting the vaccine,” she added.

KFF’s most recent random-digit dial telephone survey reached 1,888 adults from June 8 to 21. The margin of error is 3%.

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The Angolan Head of State, João Lourenço, expressed his regret at the death, of illness, of the former Ombudsman, Carlos Alberto Ferreira Pinto, which occurred on Friday.

“With much regret, I learned of the death of Dr. Carlos Alberto Ferreira Pinto, former Ombudsman, functions that he exercised with zeal over the past three years, after relevant services rendered at the level of the MPLA’s governing bodies”, wrote the President of the Republic in a note of condolence posted on his Facebook page.

President João Lourenço also said that, as Ombudsman, Carlos Aberto Ferreira Pinto has contributed, in a meritorious way, to the efforts of putting justice at the service of citizens and raise their awareness of citizenship rights.

The President considers the death of Carlos Ferreira Pinto an irreparable loss, which leaves his family, friends and professional colleagues desolated, to whom he offered his deepest and most sincere condolences. In the first quarter of this year, Ferreira Pinto withdrew from public life at his request.

Source: Angola Press News Agency