Should Africa be concerned about Covid-19 variants?
South Africa\u2019s President, Cyril Ramaphosa has said Africa needs the skills and capacity to manufacture its own Covid-19. vaccines. At a conference of African leaders, he said the world was watching \u201cvaccine apartheid\u201d.
And it\u2019s a fact that of the hundreds of millions of vaccines that have so far been given, less than two percent have been to Africans.
Up until now Africa has had a low number of Covid-19 infections compared to Europe or the United States. This is because many African governments reacted quickly - they closed borders and imposed restrictions. But the World Health Organisation has warned another wave of Covid-19 infections could happen and that less developed heath care systems could find themselves struggling. So how concerned should we be by these new variants? Prof Salim Abdul Karim is the co-chair of the South African Covid-19 advisory committee. He said, \u201cbecause we are still seeing transmission, we are seeing new variants\u201d. He said when they discovered the new South African variant \u201cthey were very concerned\u201d because this new variant \u201cwas able to cause infections in individuals who had already been infected\u201d in the first wave. So, with Covid-19 variants spreading how worried should Africa be about them?