Covid-19 outbreak

African countries were able to triple COVID-19 vaccinations in the past week, but the prospect of inoculating up to 10% of the continent's population by the end of September is still elusive, Africa's head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. At the same time, the continent saw 248,000 new confirmed cases in the past week, with at least 24 countries seeing an increase in infections driven by the delta variant. "This is a tragedy that can be prevented if African countries can get…

A Uganda-made herbal COVID-19 drug called Covidex has become very popular and hardly at the same time in Uganda when it recently released the market after the authorities approved it after some previous confirmations of coronavirus that they had used it for treatment. Addressing the press in Monday in Kampala, pharmacologist Patrick Ogwang, who led a research group in the southwestern city of Mbarara that developed the drug, said that although their production rate was still low, most of what they have…

"Not a dose, not an ampoule, has left a European factory for Africa," said the African Union's special envoy tasked with procuring COVID-19 vaccines for the continent, and criticizing Europe heavily as Africa struggles in the midst of a crushing third flood of infection. Strive Masiyiwa on Thursday also aimed at the global effort aimed at distributing vaccines to low- and middle-income countries and accused COVAX of withholding important information including key donors' failure to meet funding…

At least 800 people in Uganda have received counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, officials revealed on Wednesday. Police, Ministry of Health officials and the State House Health Monitoring Unit have arrested two nurses for injecting people with fake shots and issuing fake certificates. However, the doctor who led the operation is on the move. During a press conference in the capital Kampala, Dr. Wallen Naamara, head of the health unit, said the network deceived many people and businesses. "It is…

The coronavirus has finally reached rural Africa, which for many months has been considered a safe haven for infections that hit large cities particularly hard. For Pelagia Bvukura, who lives in a rural part of north-central Zimbabwe, COVID-19 had always been an "urban disease", affecting those in the capital Harare or other remote cities. "There was no virus for us. We only used to hear that it was in Harare or other cities or when townspeople died and we buried them here," she said recently,…

As Africa continues to lag behind in the global COVID-19 vaccination race, the continent faces a dangerous resurgence of coronavirus, with deaths and hospital admissions reaching record levels. With just under 5.3 million reported cases and about 139,000 deaths among its nearly 1.3 billion people, Africa is still the world's least affected continent after Oceania, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP). So far, African countries have been spared disasters comparable to Brazil or India. But the…

A sense of dread grows in some of the poorest countries in the world as virus cases grow and more contagious variants tackle a crippling shortage of vaccines. The crisis has alerted public health officials along with millions of unvaccinated people, especially those who are struggling in the informal economy that is not the book, living hand-to-mouth and paying cash in health crises. With intensive care units filled in cities overwhelmed by the pandemic, serious illness can be a death sentence. Africa…

Coronavirus restrictions have had an overwhelming effect on African countries, and in Kenya more than 1.7 million people lost their jobs during the first three months of the pandemic, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reported. Thousands of parents were laid off across the continent, forcing many families into extreme poverty. With schools closed for the most part for the past two years due to COVID-19-related restrictions, Koech Kipsiele, 13, was forced to work to help the family bring food to…

The Democratic Republic of Congo has begun distributing hundreds of thousands of expired COVID-19 vaccines to other African countries because it will not be able to administer all doses before they expire at the end of June, its health minister said on Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, a plane from Angola picked up almost half a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which had been delivered to Congo through the COVAX vaccine dispatch facility on March 2. Congo delayed launch after several European countries…

South Africa has signed an agreement to buy 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech double-shot vaccine COVID-19, a senior government official said on Tuesday and increased plans to increase vaccinations this month. The deal is a boost for the country hardest hit by coronavirus infections in Africa, as it adds the 31 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's single shot vaccine that the government has already secured. The first batch from Pfizer is expected to arrive later in April, Anban Pillay, deputy…