LUANDA – Angolan President João Lourenço Thursday in Luanda announced that the country has a vaccination plan to cover initially 90 percent of all its priority population.
Speaking at the 31st Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the Covid-19 response that went online, President João Lourenço said that the speedy development of safe and effective vaccines against the SARS-COV-2 virus is an indication that the humanity is capable of making it whenever threatened.
According to him, Angolan Government has until now used from its own resources the amount of Usd 164.6 million.
He explained that the above mentioned amount includes an emergency fund of Usd 14.4 million secured by the World Bank.
Despite this, the Head of State added, Angola will need more assistance, especially concerning the access to the vaccines that prove to have efficacy.
The President welcomed the Covax Facility effort to put in place resources that equitably ensure the access to vaccination of at least 20 percent of the populations from medium and low income countries.
He called on for a major effective effort of solidarity in order to ensure a useful global coverage that curbs the spread of the virus and enables the return to normalcy, as it would prevent the aggravation of disparities among the countries.
President João Lourenço stressed that since early this year, Angola reacted with the adoption of measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, through drafting a flexible contingency plan, adjusted to the country’s epidemiological context.
In this regard, he said the epidemiological surveillance has been reinforced throughout the national territory, including other measures like the training of rapid response teams and international entry ports control.
He also pointed out the setting up of quarantines and control of mobility among the various regions of the country.
Among the measures, he also highlighted the progressive increase in the capacity for carrying out RT-PCR, serological and antigen tests.
João Lourenço also spoke of the construction of infrastructures exclusively dedicated to the treatment of existing Covid-19 cases, such as field hospitals.
Still in relation to infrastructures, the Head of State said that all existing hospitals have been adapted to attend these cases, having increased the number of available beds by five thousand, of which more than one thousand for intensive care.
"At the moment, we only have community transmission in Luanda, the country's capital and most populated city, with transmission in the remaining provinces of the country limited to known occasional outbreaks," he mentioned.
He stated that despite the growing number of positive cases, which on November 24 totalled 14,742, the transmissibility of the virus from person to person has been decreasing, currently standing at 0.9%.
According to the statesman, the fact that the pandemic has adversely affected the country's economic and financial resources and economic and social development programmes, has not stopped Angola from continuing to make efforts and taking actions to reduce the poverty rates.
In this regard, he stated that the country continues to improve the quality and coverage of basic education and guarantee access to primary health care, especially for the most vulnerable families.
The President of the Republic recognised and thanked the World Health Organisation, as well as the regional institutions, the African Union, SADC, for the way they led the coordination of efforts to face the enormous challenge that Covid-19 represents to Humanity.
