"The pandemic has accelerated and is increasing rapidly, so we need to apply social detachment measures as recommended by health authorities, as we have no vaccine or cure for covid-19," said John Nkengasong during the weekly press conference Africa CDC.

In the last week, the African continent "registered an increase of 23% in new cases, which translates into 119 thousand reported cases and an average of 17 thousand daily cases, which compares with the 14 thousand daily cases in the previous week", said John Nkengasong.

"We can't be in confinement forever, we have to go out and fight the virus, but safely, and we have guidelines on how to do that, and one of them is the use of masks whenever people are in public spaces" , added the official.

At the press conference, the official also defended that schools must open for the next school year, but warned that this must be done safely and be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

"Schools are part of society, we cannot keep children out of school forever, we have to open schools progressively and safely, following the recommendations that are available," said the director of Africa CDC, stressing that "the decision has to be taken by each country under specific conditions ".

On vaccines, John Nkengasong stressed the need for continental coordination and to prevent each country from trying to obtain a vaccine on its own.

"We want to coordinate the issue of vaccines at the continental level, and not that a laboratory approaches a country proposing a vaccine, Africa CDC and the African Union are very committed to placing the continent at the forefront of trials and research, we are already in talks with vaccine production companies in Africa to take an active role in the development, distribution and administration of vaccines and not wait for them to be developed and then distributed here ", he concluded.

The death toll in Africa due to covid-19 rose to 13,797 on Wednesday, up 341 in the past 24 hours, in almost 626,000 cases, according to the latest pandemic data on the continent.

According to Africa CDC, the number of infected people rose to 625,702, 14,895 more than in the previous 24 hours, while the number of recovered people was on Wednesday 316,735, plus 10,874.

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