AU CITES COVID-19 WOES

THE last two years has been a difficult period not just for African continent but entire world due to the COVID-19, which disrupted all sectors, says Economic Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) says that.

ECOSOCC Secretariat Head, William Carew, observed that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected people’s lives.

Mr Carew noted that restricted travels and quarantine measures had negatively affected citizens world over.

ECOSOCC is part of the Africa Union (AU) structures.

He said the AU ad done a lot of work in the fight against the pandemic and was hopeful that the measures effected so far would bear positive fruit.

Mr Carew was speaking in Livingstone during the Civil Society Organisations (CSO) Town Hall meeting on Covid-19 vaccine awareness.

“While we are eager to get to a post Covid-19 Africa and some form of normality, we have to accept that this is only possible through living comfortably and openly with the vaccine. Up until recently, the various vaccines have been greeted with scepticism and surrounded by false information,” he said.

Mr Carew said that while people were more open to vaccination, varying news sources had talked about some vaccine causing blood clots and other vaccines being more effective than others.

“So, it is easy to see why people are sceptical about the vaccine. However, despite all this worrying rhetoric, the science is proving to be more effective than harmful,” he said.

Mr Carew said it was evident that the numerical losses throughout the last two years to the pandemic had been devastating.

Speaking at the same meeting workshop facilitator who also represented the Africa CDC, Lul Riek, stated that the fight against Covid-19 is far from over.

Dr Reik said that as of yesterday, over eight million people in Africa had been infected, of which an estimated 204, 000 died.