While still fighting the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Africa should prepare “for a possible third wave” of the Covid-19 which could hit the continent as the virus continued to turn into new mutations, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Friday.
“What we have seen is that, in most of African countries, the second wave has come to be much heavier, fiercer and has cost more lives. It is also likely that we might face a third wave,” Mkhize said.
He warned that “there is no way of being able to prevent it — the third wave.”
“Its impact will probably be much more devastating,” the minister said.
He noted South Africa, as Africa’s worst-hit by the pandemic with over 45,000 deaths, has procured a million AstraZeneca vaccine doses from India but remained far from being assured of safety from the third wave should the continent be hit by it during the vaccination period.
Mkhize said the continent had less than 10 countries which were able to self-finance to secure Covid-19 vaccines, with most African states needing help from the UN World Health Organisation-led COVAX facility to procure vaccines.
Africa is to receive about 600 million vaccine doses this year via the COVAX facility, he said.
As wealthier nations pushed ahead with mass immunisation, Africa was seeking to immunise 60% of its 1.3 billion people in the next three years, the minister said, adding that only a handful of African nations have so far begun giving doses to its people due to limitations of “vaccine nationalism” practiced by the wealthier nations.
NM/jn/APA