The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, Friday, that the “acute phase” of the Covid-19 pandemic ends during the current year if 70 percent of the world’s population is vaccinated.
“We are counting on the end of the acute phase of the pandemic this year, provided that 70 percent of the world’s population is vaccinated by the middle of the year, around June or July,” he said during a visit to a South African vaccine factory.
He added that “the matter is in our hands (…) it is a matter of choice.”
Ghebreyesus was visiting the laboratories of the company “Afrigin” in Cape Town, which manufactured the first anti-Covid-19 vaccine in Africa, to be ready for clinical trials in November. It is expected to be operational in 2024.
And the director of the World Health Organization stated that “this vaccine will be more adapted to the conditions in which it is used, with fewer storage restrictions and a lower price.”
The Africa project is supported by the World Health Organization and the Kovacs International Platform to facilitate access to vaccines.
Only 11 percent of Africans have received the vaccine, which is the lowest in the world. And the branch of the World Health Organization in Africa considered that the brown continent should “double six times the vaccination rate” against Covid, in the hope of reaching the desired 70 percent by the end of the first half of 2022.