大象传媒

South Africa鈥檚 President, Cyril Ramaphosa has said Africa needs the skills and capacity to manufacture its own Covid-19. vaccines. At a conference of African leaders, he said the world was watching 鈥渧accine apartheid鈥�.

And it鈥檚 a fact that of the hundreds of millions of vaccines that have so far been given, less than two percent have been to Africans.

Up until now Africa has had a low number of Covid-19 infections compared to Europe or the United States. This is because many African governments reacted quickly - they closed borders and imposed restrictions. But the World Health Organisation has warned another wave of Covid-19 infections could happen and that less developed heath care systems could find themselves struggling. So how concerned should we be by these new variants? Prof Salim Abdul Karim is the co-chair of the South African Covid-19 advisory committee. He said, 鈥渂ecause we are still seeing transmission, we are seeing new variants鈥�. He said when they discovered the new South African variant 鈥渢hey were very concerned鈥� because this new variant 鈥渨as able to cause infections in individuals who had already been infected鈥� in the first wave. So, with Covid-19 variants spreading how worried should Africa be about them?