Link to article: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/africa-sees-83-surge-covid-19-cases-past-week-2021-12-14/
As a result of low vaccination rates and new variants, the entire continent of Africa has seen an exponential increase in cases. The Omicron variant, originally discovered in Botswana, has driven this outbreak, causing the number of COVID-19 cases to double every five days. This is the fastest surge this year, but deaths remain low. The vaccines have not yet had a significant impact on the number of cases as the continent recently began their initiatives and is facing many obstacles for widespread distribution. Lack of funds, staff, and equipment has lead to only 20 African countries that have over 10% of their population vaccinated and some countries have less than 1% of their population vaccinated — such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad. Despite the slow vaccine rollout, experts are hopeful that deaths will remain low as in the same week that cases rose from 107,000 to 196,000, deaths dropped by 19%.
Africa faces many challenges in the distribution and allocation of vaccines. With help from COVAX, a global vaccine-sharing initiative, and the AVATT, the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, administration of vaccines continues to be a challenge in many countries vaccines are not the norm — the yearly flu vaccine is unheard of and people’s vaccination records come to an end in their childhood. Vaccine hesitancy, suppy, and doctors capable of administering vaccines has posed a real challenge to the success of the vaccine in Africa. New variants constantly changing and developing makes the virus difficult to control, especially in less developed countries that lack the technology and insight to predict and stop the virus.
COVID-19 has perfectly illustrated the need for global and regional hegemons to use the economic power that they hold to assist those countries struggling internally. The US Agency for International Development released a plan in response to COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa working with the State Department, and the CDC. The US government is also supporting more than 120 countries in response to COVID-19, working directly with governments, IGOs, NGOs, MNCs, and other global actors. The rapid spread of the virus also illustrates the effects of globalization and the connectedness of the world, as the virus quickly reached every corner of the world and the new variants reach almost every country very quickly.