Germany’s measures against travelers from Great Britain also affect South Africa equally. The country is also affected by the new coronavirus mutation, which, according to scientists, is 70 percent more infectious than the previously known form of the virus.
Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn explained that this Monday it is planned to use a regulation to restrict “all travel” not only with Great Britain, but also with South Africa.
The CDU politician said on Sunday evening in the ARD “Report from Berlin”: “The significantly faster transferability, as it is assumed in this case, would of course change a lot and therefore it is important to prevent the entry to Germany, to continental Europe . ”
It is important to verify the findings about the virus variant and at the same time to act with foresight. The Minister expressed his surprise that many Germans wanted to spend Christmas holidays in South Africa. He wonders if these people have not heard the messages not to travel and limit contacts.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior instructed the Federal Police to systematically check travelers from South Africa from now on. This applies with a view to the correct registration in the digital entry registration, said a spokesman on Sunday. Necessary infection control measures should be coordinated closely with the local health authorities. Travelers would have to be prepared for longer waiting times at the borders.
New mutation is 70 percent more infectious
Africans who watch the news on international TV channels these days will feel uncomfortable. There are constant pictures of European or US pharmaceutical companies filling, packing and loading thousands of glass vials: the first doses of the vaccine against the coronavirus are already being injected into fair-skinned upper arms. For the first time this year, experts are once again hopeful: the serum should finally bring about a turning point in the unfortunate fight against the pathogen. At least in part of this world.
Africa’s television viewers already suspect that they have been left behind in the race for the life-saving vaccines. According to research by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US state of Maryland, the governments of the industrialized nations have already ordered and paid for 7.5 billion vaccine doses – more than half of all vaccines that, at best, will be produced in the next few months can be. This means that industrialized nations will be able to “vaccinate” their entire population at least three times in the coming year.
It is still uncertain where the rest of the world – after all, 85 percent of humanity – will go. The researchers at Johns Hopkins University predict that the serum will not arrive in Africa, where 1.3 billion people now live, until the middle of next year at the earliest.
“That is not only ethically unscrupulous, but also stupid,” says Lawrence Gostin, Director of the Institute for National and Global Health Law at Washington’s Georgetown University: “As long as the whole world is not secured, it will always be in the rich countries too new epidemic outbreaks come, ”he warns.
On the initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO), the “Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility” (Covax) was founded in April: an association of 187 countries with which even the poorest countries should be given access to vaccines. So far, $ 2 billion has been paid into the group’s funding mechanism – of which the US is not a member. This means that just three percent of the population of the southern hemisphere can be vaccinated in the next six months.
Revocation of patent rights prevented by the West
The governments of South Africa and India had therefore tried to obtain a temporary suspension of patent rights for vaccines from the World Trade Organization (WTO). In this way, other pharmaceutical companies – without the express consent of the serum developers – could also manufacture the vaccine. This would reduce costs and increase production.
The advance met with criticism in the Western nations: They see it as undermining the protection of intellectual property, which is indispensable for the costly development of new pharmaceuticals. However, the argument is controversial – also in view of the fact that tax money in the billions was used in the development of the Covid-19 serum. Washington pumped a total of more than ten billion dollars into vaccine research, while Berlin donated almost half a billion euros to the Pfizer-Biontech cooperation.
Although more than 100 countries supported the proposal to temporarily repeal patent law, the initiative failed due to resistance from the West. It is unlikely that South Africa will receive the first vaccination dose before April, says the Johannesburg vaccinologist Shabir Mahdi. Even if the first cans landed in the Cape in April, not all hurdles would be cleared.
Because at least in the case of the product from Biontech and Pfizer, it must be ensured that the vaccine, which has to be cooled to minus 70 degrees, can be distributed everywhere. In large parts of Africa it will be technically as good as impossible. (with dpa)
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