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The African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team – established by AU chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa – has secured a provisional 270 million vaccine doses for African countries.
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
THE Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights Doctors (ZADHR) has warned that the country must prepare for a possible second wave of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic despite recording a major decline in confirmed cases early this week. By Brenna Matendere On the other hand, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has also urged nations to be vigilant, stressing that the global cases were yet to reach the peak. Zimbabwe’s conformed cases spiked to 591 by the end of June, from 34 on May 2. Most of the new cases recorded were among returnees from South Africa, Botswana and the United Kingdom. Only seven COVID-19-related deaths have so far been recorded. Speaking to NewsDay yesterday, ZADHR secretary Norman Matara said government should not relax or think the situation was normalising. “Recording no cases in one day is no reason to relax,” he said after no cases were recorded on Sunday. “Previously, there was a period that we went through for almost one week without reporting a single case of COVID-19, but that did not mean we were out of the woods yet.” Matara pointed out that due to the sharp rise in cases in South Africa, where most returning citizens were coming from, there was a possibility of a similar situation happening in the country, resulting in the second wave. “We need to remain extra vigilant and cautious, continue enhancing our disease surveillance and make sure the public continues to practise social distancing and good hygiene practices,” he said. “With cases of COVID-19 continuing to increase in neighbouring South Africa, and we have people returning home from that country, we should always remain on high alert. It is definitely not time to relax.” In his media brief on Monday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed similar sentiments, saying: “The virus still has a lot of room to move. We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is: this is not even close to being over.” Itai Rusike, the Community Working Group on Health executive director, reiterated that “rolling back the lockdown will also depend on voluntary informed consent by the public to comply with appropriate public health measures”. Agnes Mahomva, the COVID-19 national taskforce co-ordinator, told NewsDay that government would not relax measures owing to declining cases. “We are not out of the woods at all. We need to keep strengthening our preparedness and response. We also need to remain focused,” she said.
[Premium Times] UN Chief says the world must unite to make coronavirus vaccines available to everyone, everywhere.
It also critically examines inequalities between the global North and the global South, the growing influence of China's trade relations with Africa and, more importantly, it unpacks the deeply absorbed capitalist globalised hierarchies and the deep structures of racial thinking in the emerging global architecture, and examines the role of the African Union and other regional influential in rescuing the bank from the clutches of western buccaneers.
America's Treasury Secretary, Steven Terner Mnuchin, on May 22, 2020 called for an independent investigation into the affairs of the African Development Bank in the twilight of the re-election of the incumbent president on the heels of the whistleblowing accounts of perceived issues of executive impropriety in the recruitment and consultancy contracts.
Furthermore, another subtle and deadly foreign policy mechanism America uses to achieve its stranglehold on other nations, particularly Africa, is the mobilisation of international shame and brainwashing by which she lobbies other states into believing that the actions of a state or a region (Africa, in this instance) is inimical to America's interest.
Once there is an open knowledge that an institution like the Africa Development Bank is acting against international norms (America's interest, in this instance), other states, particularly the 27 non-regional members, may apply diplomatic pressure to forestall the re-election of Akinwumi Adesina as the President of the Bank.
The suspicion of the United States Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin, and his principal, Donald Trump, in a letter to Niale Kaba, Chairperson of the bank, encrusted fine points which disagreed with the conclusions - in line with corporate governance systems and rules of engagement - of the ethics committee of directors and the Chair of Bureau of Governors' findings on the allegations leveled against the bank's president is to avoid her veiled agenda, which is to rubbish the sterling performance of the bank as a regional player in African intra-trade resurgence and to thwart the promise the bank holds to leapfrog development and reduce poverty on the continent.
The World Health Assembly, which has been trimmed from the usual three weeks to just two days, Monday and Tuesday, is expected to focus almost solely on Covid-19, which in a matter of months has killed more than 310,000 globally, and infected nearly 4.7 million.
Despite the tensions, countries hope to adopt by consensus a resolution urging a joint response to the pandemic.
While diplomats have agreed in principle on the draft resolution, observers voiced concerns that in the current politicised atmosphere, some countries might still choose to break the consensus next week.
And Washington is also leading a number of countries in demanding that the WHO end its exclusion of Taiwan -- considered by Beijing to be part of its territory -- and allow it to access next week's assembly as an observer.
The United States, which will be represented during the assembly by Health Secretary Alex Azar, is meanwhile not among the countries who are asking the WHA to make a call on the issue of Taiwan's participation.
In these uncertain times, it is important that people work together to ensure that they do all they can to prevent the further spread of the virus.
Luckily, mobile money has been a key element of how people manage their finances in Tanzania and East Africa in general for many years now.
There are numerous benefits to mobile money that Tanzania has enjoyed in recent years.
These benefits have been largely driven by innovative telecoms companies, like Tigo Tanzania, who have worked to create user friendly mobile money services such as Tigo Pesa.
More online solutions together with all our other health measures that are already in place will help minimise the spread of COVID-19 and help keep people safe.
West African countries that had imposed travel restrictions to combat the spread of Covid-19 are contemplating coordinating efforts to allow travelers from countries within the region to enter to conduct cross-border trade.
In a video meeting with the 15-member regional bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) foreign and trade ministers, a new proposal was tabled to allow cross-border trade within the country bloc by the first two weeks in July.
The ministers' proposal is a three-phased solution that will be discussed at the next heads of state ECOWAS summit.
For the next phase, land, sea, and air borders within the 15-country bloc would be open by 15 July.
Phase three would allow the region to open to outside countries \"with low and controlled levels of Covid-19 contamination rates\" by 31 July, but this would depend on how the pandemic plays out.
The World Health Organization on Monday urged countries to continue funding the agency, saying it will initiate an independent review into its handling of the coronavirus pandemic \"at the earliest appropriate moment.\"
Speaking at the 194-member World Health Assembly virtual conference, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, also called on all nations to \"do everything it takes to ensure that the 2020 coronavirus pandemic is never repeated.\"
Mr Ghebreyesus said the world could no longer afford the \"short-term amnesia\" that had characterised the global response to health crises in the past.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the U.S. President, Donald Trump, threatened to permanently pull funding from the World Health Organisation (WHO) if it does not commit to \"major substantive improvements\" within 30 days, according to a letter to the WHO chief shared by Mr Trump on Twitter on Monday.
\"The only way forward for the World Health Organisation is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China,\" the U.S. president asserted.
Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has announced that the National COVID-19 Vaccine Coordinating Committee will soon be established.\tThis comes as more pharmaceutical companies have reported success in the efficacy of new vaccines to mitigate...
