Burundi opts to forgo free Covax vaccines, what are the consequences?
RegionWeek Newsletter Vol IV, Issue #159 | Monday, February 8, 2021
This is RegionWeek Newsletter for the 4th Season (January-June 2021), a briefing that adds depth to strategic news events and topics. A quick note that shares ideas on what you can do next. Business Leaders, Decision Makers, and Young Professionals trust RegionWeek for concise analysis and Unique perspectives.
Dear RegionWeek Readers,
World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced plans for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout on the Africa continent. But Burundi will not benefit from this first dispatch. Are there consequences on this decision to delay the use of the Covid-19 vaccine as a measure to fight coronavirus in Burundi?
The initial 90 million doses will support countries inoculate 3 percent of the African population most in need of protection, including health workers and other vulnerable groups in the first half of 2021.
Tanzania and Burundi are countries in Africa that claim they are not interested in using the COVID-19 COVAX vaccine from WHO. Initially Tanzania, through Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima, said on Monday (01/02) that his country had no plans to bring in a COVID-19 vaccine.
Then Burundi, through Health Minister Thaddee Ndikumana, said on Thursday (04/02) that his country is more concerned with prevention. And because almost all COVID-19 patients have recovered, they think there is no need to bring in vaccines anymore, as reported by the Associated Press.
The COVAX Facility
The COVAX Global Vaccines Facility is the vaccine pillar of the ACT-Accelerator, an initiative launched in April 2020 to speed up the development of medicines to treat COVID-19 and make them available to people everywhere.
The global initiative is led by WHO; Gavi the Vaccine Alliance; and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). It works to ensure as many countries as possible cooperate to pool development, procurement and allocation of any COVID-19 vaccines.
1.Public misinformation
One of the great challenges is that Coronavirus misinformation is most likely to continue to spread around if the vaccine option is ignored by health officials in the early stage of the vaccine rollout. The public health benefits of approved COVID-19 vaccines will be undermined by hesitancy from populations to be vaccinated. It will take a huge amount of effort in communicating with all citizens so as to maximize the take-up rate. This will be a particular challenge in faith communities.
A paper published in Nature last year mapped online views on vaccination. The authors concluded that “although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral”. They warned that in a decade the anti-vaccination movement could overwhelm pro-vaccination voices online. If that came to pass, the consequences would stretch far beyond COVID-19.
Read Also: Burundi Government approach to COVID-19 pandemic, Stage 1
2.Travel restrictions
Every country needs herd immunity for travel to resume the way it did pre-pandemic. It may be tough to reach that herd stage in East Africa Community if vaccination campaigns are not coordinated the same way in Burundi and in other countries. As Dr. Jewel Mullen, from the University of Texas notes, we are part of a global community whose health, economy, and futures are linked and impacted by the pandemic. Infectious disease specialists often talk about herd immunity, which refers to the effectiveness of immunization when the vast majority of people have been vaccinated against a disease.
One of the key ways herds immunity works is by minimizing the number of people who are at risk of catching the disease, thus diminishing its power to spread. When someone who is not vaccinated against a particular disease comes into contact with that disease, the spread becomes exponential if other people in the community are not vaccinated against it either. Every non-vaccinated person they meet – and in turn, every non-vaccinated person they meet – is vulnerable, emphasizes The Mac Gill University Health Center.
Read Also: What would Burundi gain by covering up COVID-19 cases?
3.The accentuated risk for people with weakened immune systems and Health workers
For people with chronic medical conditions like lung, heart, liver, kidney disease, or diabetes and Health workers will have to face accentuated risk of contracting Covid-19 or its most deadly new strains if the option to consider the vaccine is not taken seriously in Burundi.
Wearing masks and social distancing help reduce the chance of being exposed to the virus or spreading it to others, but these measures are not enough. Vaccines work with the immune system so it will be ready to fight the virus if you are exposed.
The considerable number of front-line health care workers needs a new layer of protection. Those health care workers and those in nursing homes should go first, followed by those 75 and older, that can’t be possible if the vaccine option is not envisaged at an early stage.
Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, highlighted that the deployment is a “critical first step” to ensure countries’ access to vaccines.
“We urge African nations to ramp up readiness and finalize their national vaccine deployment plans. Regulatory processes, cold chain systems, and distribution plans need to be in place to ensure vaccines are safely expedited from ports of entry to delivery”, she added.
Beyond Consequences, reasonable doubts
Even though there are consequences in minimizing how crucial covid-19 vaccines are for countries like Burundi, Tanzania, Eritrea, Madagascar. It is important to note that some questions that don’t have clear answers raise hesitancy for key decision-makers in those countries.
One among frequently asked questions is this one: “After one has been vaccinated, can one still catch COVID-19, and can one also infect others?”
The same question was asked to WHO’s Dr. Katherine O'Brien on one of the WHO Podcast. Here is the answer she provided:
“That's a great question. The clinical trials demonstrated that these vaccines protect people against disease. What we don't know yet from the clinical trials is whether or not the vaccines also protect people from just getting infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and whether or not it protects against transmitting to somebody else. So, this is a really important part of our understanding about what these vaccines do. Do they only protect against disease or do they also protect against getting infected and being able to transmit to somebody else, even if you're not having any symptoms?(……) So, we really need to continue these precautions while we're still learning about what the vaccines can do. Can they protect against getting infected and transmitting to someone else? And right now, we're in a situation where there's still very broad transmission in many countries, the transmission is just out of control. And so for how long we need to continue these precautions is really going to depend on what communities and countries can do to really crush this virus, to crush the transmission.”
RegionWeek analysts note that there are still questions that need simple and clear answers, and the lack of first-hand information and clarity is one of the challenges that decision-makers face.
Thanks for reading, Stay safe!
Fabrice Iranzi
Editor in Chief, RegionWeek.com
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