WHO: Africa Might Miss 70% Vaccination Goal Until Late 2024
Newsy
The warning comes as the world faces a new surge in cases driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant.
The African continent might not reach the target of vaccinating 70% of its 1.3 billion population against COVID-19 until the second half of 2024, a target many of the world's richer countries have already met, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
The warning comes as the world faces a new surge in cases driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant. Health officials in South Africa, which first announced the variant, say early data indicate it causes less severe illness and shorter, less intensive hospital stays. But some richer countries have rushed to allow booster vaccine doses in response, even as less than 8% of Africa's population has received two doses.
"We will never get out of this if we don’t work together as one world," Flavia Senkubuge, president of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, told reporters at the WHO briefing.
