At a news conference on Thursday, Africa’s top public health official John Nkengasong said strict lockdowns are no longer a solution to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Following the emergence of the new Omicron variant, many countries throughout Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands and Austria, have reinstated lockdown to prevent the spread of the new variant.
“The period where we are using severe lockdowns as a tool is over, we should actually be looking at how we use public health and social measures more carefully, and in a balanced way as vaccination increases,” said Nkengasong.
Nkengasong praised South Africa for the way it responded to the latest infection wave driven by the Omicron variant, saying, “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).”
Nkengasong added that he was concerned that COVID-19 could dominate cases on the continent given the slow progression of the vaccination campaigns.
The latest CDC Africa data showed that less than 10% of the African population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
There has been an average increase of 36% in new cases in Africa over the past 4 weeks, with an average increase of 8% in recorded deaths, according to the same source.
On November 25, scientists in South Africa announced that they’ve detected the new Omicron variant, formerly known as B.1.1.529, following the noticeable increase in the country’s total number of cases.
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