A strict lockdown is no longer the best way to contain COVID-19, Africa's most senior health official said, praising South Africa for its approach to dealing with the recent wave of infections there caused by the Omicron mutation of the new coronavirus.
"We have been very encouraged by what we have seen during this period in South Africa, where they are looking at the data in terms of the severity (of infections)," John Nkengasong, who is director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said at a press conference.
"The period in which strict lockdown was used as a tool (against COVID-19) is over. What we really need to look at now is how to use the public health system and social measures more carefully and in a balanced way as we increase vaccination against COVID-19," he added.
South Africa has faced a sudden spike in cases of the new coronavirus since late November, around the time it alerted the world to the Omicron mutation, seeing the number of new cases peak in mid-December in record time.
However, new cases have since declined and the government has not resorted to severe restrictive measures as it had during previous waves of the outbreak, due to early indications that the majority of Omicron cases were mild. Before New Year's Eve it even moved to relax regulations.
Nkengasong added that he feared COVID-19 could become endemic on the continent because of the slow pace of vaccinations - a prospect many global scientists are talking about as if it were a given.
"If (...) by the end of this year the continent does not increase its vaccinations to over 70% or 80%, my concern is that we may (...) face a scenario in which COVID becomes endemic," he noted.
Experts believe that COVID-19 cannot be eliminated and will probably become endemic, which means that it will always be present in the population to some extent, like influenza or chickenpox.
Less than 10% of Africa's population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the most recent Africa CDC data, with many countries struggling at first to access sufficient numbers of vaccine doses and then struggling to manage to administer them.
In Africa there has been an average 36% increase in new cases in the last 4 weeks and an average 8% increase in new deaths from COVID-19.
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