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Lost generation: Uganda’s schools reopened after nearly two years of COVID-19 closures – the longest in the world. More than 50% of students stopped learning as a result. One-third of students are expected to stay out of school, instead working to support their families. And many teachers have been lost to other professions. The situation is similarly dire in South Africa, where at least 775,000 students have dropped out and teen pregnancies have increased by 60%. The changing nature of the virus means it...
ONE CAMPAIGN
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Model behavior: A new COVID vaccine is on the block – and the US scientists behind it decided to make it available to the world (read: no patents, no-frills tech transfer, and a round of applause from us to the makers, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine). Production is underway in India under the drug name CORBEVAX, and its inventors speculate that it will soon reach more people in middle- and low-income countries than those donated by G7 nations. It’s...
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Africa rising: COVID-19 cases are surging across Africa, with many countries experiencing a fourth wave amidst the Omicron variant. In Nigeria, the number of daily confirmed infections over the past week jumped from 76 to 451, following the discovery of the new variant in the country. Both South Africa and Kenya surpassed the WHO high-risk threshold of 5% for COVID-19 cases, with South Africa exceeding a 30% positivity rate and Kenya at 6.5%. However, despite the surge of COVID-19 infections in Africa, the number...
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Vaccine bandits: A black market for vaccines is undermining Kenya’s vaccination campaign, just weeks before a mandate goes into effect. Corrupt officials are diverting vaccines, falsifying records, and smuggling vials (to mostly remote areas) for $30 to $50 each. These vaccine bandits create significant health concerns: the doses are often transported without adequate refrigeration, they risk contamination, and they aren’t being administered by healthcare professionals with proper sanitation or precautions. The Kenyan government offers doses for free to its citizens, but...
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Omicron rising: Health officials in South Africa announced Wednesday that the Omicron variant has become the most prevalent version of COVID-19 in the country. The number of cases doubled from Tuesday, and test positivity climbed from 10.2% to 16.5%. In Gauteng province, early analyses suggest that COVID-19 cases and test positivity are increasing faster than in previous waves. While hospitalizations in the country are also rising, it’s too soon to draw conclusions about Omicron’s transmissibility and lethality, and officials are urging caution. On Wednesday,...
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Face, meet palm: At least 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been thrown away since last December in Canada, roughly 2.6% of the total number of doses delivered across the country. Some pharmacists are still being encouraged to throw away unused doses, rather than give them to non-eligible people. Meanwhile, only 6.9% of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated and COVID-19 deaths have increased the fastest in low-income countries, which have the lowest vaccination rates globally. Strive Masiyiwa, head of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task...
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Surge campaign: Nigeria plans to administer more than 1 million vaccines a day, starting this Friday. The surge is intended to vaccinate half of its target population, or 55 million people, by the end of January. Just 1.5% of Nigerians are fully vaccinated. The government says it has enough vaccines in the pipeline to hit this mark, as well as plans to scale up vaccination sites. But success is far from assured. Nigeria’s political and economic troubles risk...
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Dose deployment: Johnson & Johnson will make its vaccines available for NGOs to deploy in conflict settings, waiving liability restrictions that have previously prevented nongovernmental actors from administering them. The US government will also donate an additional 1.5 million J&J doses to people in conflict settings. Significant hurdles remain in actually deploying vaccines in conflict zones, including security risks for humanitarian workers and establishing networks to share inoculation site information.
Ignoble Prize: Diplomats are desperately trying to avert an all-out civil war in Ethiopia. At least 16...
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12 years of waiting: Rich countries failed to mobilise the $100 billion in climate finance that they promised to developing nations (ahem) 12 years ago. Meanwhile, 34 of the world’s poorest countries spend five times more on debt payments than they do on curbing the effects of climate change ($29.4 billion to $5.4 billion). Jubilee Debt Campaign, which produced the analysis, was at COP to sound the alarm on the issue — but Glasgow police considered their inflatable Loch Ness debt monster more of a...
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Coup d’Abdalla: Sudan’s military leaders seized power on Monday, arresting Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdock and derailing a transition to democratic rule two years in the making. The US halted a $700 million aid package earmarked for the democratic transition, and experts speculate that the move also imperils a $50 billion debt relief package announced in June. Sudan is battling surging food prices and inflation (a quarter of the population is food insecure), and just 1.3% of the population...