Day: January 12, 2023

PRETORIA, South Africa’s Department of Health will begin to make additional COVID-19 vaccination booster doses available to all adults, following the detection of the more transmissible XBB.1.5 sub-variant of the Omicron variant in the country.

The department’s Dr Lesley Bamford explained that currently, adults over the age of 50 are eligible to receive four doses – including booster doses – of the vaccine, while those between 18 and 49 can receive three doses.

“It is our intention to offer an additional dose. So that will be a fifth dose for people 50 years and older and a fourth dose for people 18 to 49 years of age. Those additional doses will also be available for people who are immunocompromised.

“Our expectation is that those additional booster doses will be available during January, probably towards the end of the month. But we are working hard to provide those additional doses.

“Any adult who has not had a dose in the past six months, whether they are immunocompromised or not, will be eligible to receive an additional booster dose,” she said.

Bamford added that children between the ages of 12 and 17 years of age will not be eligible for booster doses.

“That age group is eligible to receive two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Our Vaccine Ministerial Advisory Committee has indicated that they currently do not recommend that we provide booster doses to that age group based on an understanding that the protection provided by the two doses should be adequate in that age group which is at low risk of severe COVID-19 infection.

“[Regarding] the paediatric Pfizer vaccine…we anticipate that, that vaccine will arrive in the country towards the end of January or the beginning of February,” she said.

She explained that a “mix and match between the two different vaccines” can be taken as a booster and that South Africa has enough vaccine doses available.

“We do have large stocks of our two vaccines. We have approximately 10 million doses of the J&J vaccine and 8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine…currently the doses expire at the end of March and the end of April. However, we do anticipate that the shelf life of the vaccines will be extended for a minimum of another three months.

“The J&J vaccines do not expire until 2024 and in some cases, 2025,” she said.

Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, emphasised that the vaccine has been proven to make a difference even at the height of the fourth wave.

“We are advocating for vaccination and the reason we’re doing so is because vaccination has [been] proven [to be efficient] beyond reasonable doubt. Since there has been vaccinations, any changes in the nature of the virus in terms of variants…even when there has been high transmissibility, has resulted in milder illness and sometimes even asymptomatic infections.

“Vaccines have proven to be effective. Not in terms of preventing one to be infected but many of us who have been vaccinated even when we got infected, it remained very mild and statistics are there,” he said.

By Monday, some 38,271,617 jabs had been administered with 22,498,138 people receiving at least one dose.

Source: Nam News Network

A senior U.S. envoy expressed strong concern Thursday about the activities of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group and its alleged attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and elsewhere in the world.

U.S. State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said he voiced these concerns during talks in Belgrade with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

“We have seen that the Wagner Group is seeking to recruit soldiers from Serbia and elsewhere, and that’s something we think cannot stand,” he told reporters after the meeting.

“I don’t know if there are concerns [in Serbia], we talked about our concerns and we are looking forward to working with the government here in Belgrade and elsewhere where Wagner is active to put an end to their activities,” he added.

Wagner Group, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, reportedly has been active in dozens of mostly African states, working with governments on pro-Russian propaganda and other military and political projects.

The group has boasted about its presence in Serbia, the only European state besides Belarus that has not joined international sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine. The group has reportedly announced the opening of its offices in Belgrade, something that was later denied.

Moscow’s propaganda portal RT, which recently started its Serbian-language online news site in Serbia, has published Wagner’s recruitment advertisement seeking fighters in Ukraine, saying the group offers “more than attractive” incentives.

Chollet said Wagner Group is “in action in terrible ways throughout the world, whether it is in Libya, the Central African Republic or right now in Ukraine.”

The group, which reportedly includes a large contingent of convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has spearheaded the attacks in eastern Ukraine, including the fierce battles in Soledar and Bakhmut.

Prigozhin and his group have been under U.S. sanctions for years, and the U.S. has recently taken additional steps to try to control Wagner’s access to weapons.

Wagner Group mercenaries have also been accused by Western countries and United Nations experts of numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali. Earlier this month U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced he has designated the Wagner Group as an “entity of particular concern” for its activities in the Central African Republic.

Chollet also urged Serbia to introduce sanctions against its traditional Slavic ally Russia.

“We believe that countries should sign on to the sanctions, and the reason why we believe that is because Russia’s actions do not only have to be condemned, they have to be punished,” he said. “Russia every day is prosecuting a brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine. We need to stand together, to ensure that this behavior, it’s clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”

The U.S. envoy this week launched a tour of several Balkan nations in a visit focused on international efforts to help normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia after weeks of heightened tension. The former Serbian province declared independence in 2008, something Serbia and Russia don’t recognize.

Source: Voice of America

Dakar, Fourteen Malian soldiers were killed and 11 wounded on Tuesday in two separate attacks in central Mali after their vehicles struck explosive devices, the army said.

The incidents took place in central regions where militants with ties to al Qaeda and Islamic State regularly attack civilians, Malian soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and other international forces, Reuters reports.

The deployment of reinforcements in response to the latest attacks led to the killing of 31 militants, the army said in a statement.

Reuters could not independently confirm the report and no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Mali has been wracked by Islamist violence since 2012 when jihadist groups hijacked an uprising by Tuareg separatists in the north. The violence has since spread to other countries in West Africa’s Sahel region despite a costly international military response.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

Mali’s army says 14 troops were killed and 11 wounded Tuesday in central Mali when their vehicles struck explosives planted by Islamist militants.

In a press release Wednesday, the army said there were two explosives that detonated simultaneously.

The attacks were in central Mali, a region that has seen increasing violence in recent years from Islamist militants.

The army statement says Mali’s airborne special forces engaged what it called “terrorists,” killing 31 of them, including 14 as they were burying their dead.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks.

Mali has been battling an Islamist insurgency since 2012. It started in the north of the country before spreading.

The militants took control of northern Mali in 2012, until the French army intervened in 2013 to drive them out.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced last year that French troops would withdraw from Mali after months of tensions between Paris and Bamako.

France deplored Mali’s military government’s working with Russian Wagner mercenaries, who have been accused of committing atrocities in the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Syria, and Ukraine.

Mali’s military government denies working with mercenaries and says there are only official Russian military instructors in the country.

Mali has been under military rule since an August 2020 coup that ousted former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Violence has continued to move south ever since, with ongoing attacks in central Mali and increasing attacks in southern Mali.

Militants on January 2 attacked a civil defense post about 80 kilometers from the capital, killing five people.

In July, militants killed six people in an attack on a checkpoint 70 kilometers from Bamako followed by another attack one week later on Mali’s main military camp, just 15 kilometers from the capital.

Source: Voice of America