omicron – anabenonline

To combat the Covid-19 Omicron variant which rages across the world, the MTN Group has disclosed its intention to implement a mandatory vaccination policy for every one of its staff. The policy was to take effect from January 2022.

This was announced by the Group’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Ralph Nupita. He explained that the Group was out to protect the health and safety of people and workplaces.
He said vaccination would reduce the rates of serious infections, hospitalisation, and death.

He said: “As an employer, we have a responsibility to ensure that our workplaces are guided by the highest standards of health and safety, and that has informed our decision to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for our staff.

“Our new COVID-19 policy recognises that some of our markets don’t have adequate access to vaccines. It also recognises some low-risk roles that will be accommodated with full-time work-from-home or alternate arrangements, but this will be a small population within our workforce.”

He further pointed out that both the World Health Organisation, WHO, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control, advocate vaccines, with the reason that they were an important measure to protect people.

He emphasised that global vaccinations since 2020 had helped in containing and managing the virus in many countries.

“Vaccine equity continues to be a major issue for African countries. As MTN, we add our voice to the calls for more vaccines to be made available to African countries, as herd immunity will only happen when the whole globe has reached a sufficient level of COVID-19 vaccination.

“The latest travel bans on African countries by developed nations are not based on science, are unjust and add to the lack of support for Africa that is much needed for an effective global response to the pandemic. African countries are being punished for the very transparency that’s actually needed to successfully combat the impact on lives and livelihoods of the COVID-19 virus,’’ he said.

He noted that out of the global population vaccination rate of 55 per cent, only seven per cent of Africans had been vaccinated.
He said, “The fight against COVID-19 needs a global, comprehensive and equitable allocation of vaccines.”

He added that the MTN Group’s new vaccine policy is a measure to meet MTN’s legal obligations in regard to providing a safe workplace and shall be subject to risk assessment and local laws that apply to the MTN Group and our operating companies and subsidiaries.

“It also recognises the right of employees to apply to be exempted from the policy and/or refuse vaccination on certain clearly defined grounds.

“For those staff who are not exempt from vaccinations either through risk assessment or agreed to exclusions but still refuse vaccination, MTN will not be obliged to continue the employment contract.”

The new mandatory vaccination policy follows the Group’s US$25 million donations to the African Union’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Prepare for likely spread of Omicron—– WHO to countries

World Health Organisation (WHO) has on Friday advised countries to not panic but prepare for the likely spread of COVID-19 Omicron variant. This is as scientists continue to study the variant.

Speaking in Geneva, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier emphasised that data suggesting that Omicron was highly transmissible was only preliminary.

The UN health agency also revealed that finding out more about how transmissible and dangerously the variant is would take more two weeks.

He also repeated WHO advice against blanket travel bans, with the exception of countries with health systems unable to withstand a surge in infections.

“It is much more preferred to prepare your country, your health system to possibly incoming cases because we can be pretty sure that this Omicron variant will spread around,” he said.

Lindmeier also said the Delta mutation, which has become a concern this summer, is now predominant, with over 90 percent all around the world.

“This is how this virus behaves and we will not most likely be able to keep it out of individual countries,” he said.

He also warned against unthinking reactions to reports that the variant had continued to spread.

“Let’s not get deterred right now, let us first get as much information as possible to make the correct risk assessment based on the information that we will have and then let’s move on.

“Let’s not get completely worried or confused by individual information which are all individually important, but which need to be brought together in order to assess together,” he said.

This comes as the health organization revealed that it was sending a technical surge team to South Africa’s Gauteng province to monitor Omicron and help with contact tracing, amid a spike in coronavirus reinfections.

For the seven days leading to Nov. 30, it was reported that South Africa had a 311 per cent increase in new cases when compared with the previous seven days, WHO said on Thursday.

Cases in Gauteng province, where Johannesburg is located, have also increased by 375 per cent week on week.

Hospital admissions there had risen 4.2 per cent in the past seven days from the previous week and COVID-19-related deaths in the province had risen 28.6 per cent from the previous seven days.

According to Dr Salam Gueye, WHO Regional Emergency Director for Africa, just 102 million Africans in Africa – 7.5 per cent of the continental population— are now fully vaccinated.

He lamented that more than 80 per cent of the population had not received even a single dose. This he described as a dangerously wide gap.

“The detection and timely reporting of the new variant by Botswana and South Africa has bought the world time,” said Dr Matshidiso, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

“We have a window of opportunity but must act quickly and ramp up detection and prevention measures.

“Countries must adjust their COVID-19 response and stop a surge in cases from sweeping across Africa and possibly overwhelming already-stretched health facilities,” Moeti said. (NAN)

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