Severe lockdowns no longer a tool to contain Covid-19, says Africa's top health official

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, said that he feared that Covid-19 could become endemic on the continent given the slow pace of vaccination - a prospect many global scientists already talk of as a given.

Africa's top public health official said on Thursday that severe lockdowns were no longer the best way to contain Covid-19, praising South Africa for adopting that approach when responding to its latest infection wave driven by the Omicron variant.

"We are very encouraged with what we saw in South Africa during this period where they look at the data in terms of severity (of infections)," John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told a news conference.