Africa CDC urges all nations to join WHO’s COVAX vaccine initiative

All nations should join hands in a global effort to procure and distribute potential vaccines against the coronavirus across the globe, the head of Africa’s diseases control body said on Thursday.

“We are in this together. No country will be safe if any other country in the world still has cases of COVID,” John Nkengasong, the head of the Addis Ababa-based Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa-CDC), told an online news conference.

“We are seeing an epidemiological curve that is either stabilising or decreasing, representing a sign of hope,” he said, adding that the picture may not be entirely clear due to an inadequate number of tests.

He, however, cautioned that it was too early for the continent to declare victory against the pandemic.

“We are very careful not to go to a state of complacency,” he said.