Brazilian scientist Túlio de Oliveira, one of those responsible for identifying the new omicron variant of the virus that causes Covid-19, made an appeal this Wednesday (1st) for help for African countries to fight the disease.
“Please let me repeat my request to governments, financial institutions and billionaires to help South Africa and Africa,” wrote the Brazilian, who has lived in South Africa for over 20 years.
According to him, the lack of international aid to the continent, which has very low immunization rates, delays the global fight against the pandemic.
“Should we wait for hospitalizations, deaths and the neutralizing action of vaccines to act? Didn’t we learn that rapid response is what controls pandemics and epidemics?”
Oliveira runs South Africa’s Center for Innovation and Response to Epidemics and was part of a team that sequenced the new variant in the country last week.
Since then, several countries around the world have closed air borders to South African and neighboring countries, including Brazil.
It is an attempt to prevent the spread of the new variant, considered to be more transmissible, and which may be less susceptible to the vaccines that currently exist against Covid-19. Despite this, the omicron has been rapidly spreading across the planet.
Since the discovery of the variant, Oliveira has been demanding in posts greater solidarity from the international community towards Africa. In the case of South Africa, he claims that the country cannot be punished for being transparent, and that it should instead be rewarded for alerting the world to this new threat.
On Wednesday, he ironically compared himself to climate activist Greta Thunberg, who routinely charges the international community for its lack of concern for the environmental issue.
“I’m going to start speaking like Greta Thuynberg. Bla-bla-bla to all the promises of world leaders. They have promised many times vaccines, support, antivirals etc. to poor countries in the pandemic, and we are still waiting, as the pandemic grows out of control.” .
According to the Oxford University project Our World in Data, only 11.09% of Africans have taken at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, while 7.33% are fully immunized.
In developed and emerging countries, such as Brazil, the rate of immunized people exceeds 50%. With fewer people vaccinated, the chance of the virus spreading is greater, which also favors the emergence of new, more resistant variants.
The Brazilian scientist has also criticized the economic effects caused to South Africa by the ban on flights, in addition to saying that this measure hinders his research, due to the lack of inputs.
“We will soon run out of reagents, as planes are not arriving in South Africa. It will be terrible if we cannot answer the questions the world needs to know about omicrons due to the travel ban,” he said.
Last Thursday (25), the professor had already made an appeal to some of the richest people in the world, to financially help Africa to control the variants. He mentioned among others Elon Musk (Tesla), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Warren Buffett (Berkshire). “By protecting the poor and oppressed population of Africa, we will protect the world,” he said.
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