Silvia Lutucuta, who participated this Tuesday in the I Conference on "Pandemic Management in Africa: The case of Angola", promoted by NC-Consultorius, said that for the prevention of the pandemic, the country has "a very powerful weapon", which is vaccination.
"We want to increase our numbers of vaccinated people and we would like to have 31 percent vaccination coverage by the end of September," she said.
According to the minister, the challenge for vaccine procurement is very big "and the country is doing everything to have timely vaccines and vaccinate the entire eligible population."
"We are getting a big shipment of vaccines. This week we will receive a little more than a million doses of vaccines from Pfizer, an amount above the average of what we are used to, and for this reason we invite all Angolans aged 18 years or older to go to the vaccination posts, because the vaccine is free, safe and life-saving," stressed the minister in statements to the press.
At this time, the country is in the implementation of its vaccination plan, which is in two stages, with 20 percent of the population to be vaccinated in the first stage and 29 percent in the second, having already vaccinated more than 1.7 million people.
Angola currently has 60 high performance vaccination posts throughout the national territory, and is working to soon have the digital vaccination certificate.
"We are already working on this, because it is a safe way to ensure that people have information about their vaccination status, whenever it is requested, on the other hand, mobility depends a lot on vaccination," she stressed.
The Health Minister said that Angola has not lost any vaccine dose and has received many international compliments regarding the vaccination campaign, especially from the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to Sílvia Lutucuta, the appearance of new variants of the virus is a major challenge in the management of covid-19 in Angola, stressing that the new strains currently constitute 57 percent of the total number of cases registered in the country.
The minister said that the English and South African strains are in community circulation, with only one case of the Brazilian strain having been diagnosed, in addition to seven cases of the Indian strain.
"To say that 57 percent of the cases we have in recent times correspond to the new variants. These variants are of concern, they have very rapid transmissibility and affect individuals of any age and are also the cause of grief and pain in our breast at any age, with or without comorbidities," the minister said.
In turn, the WHO emergency officer, Javier Aramburo, reiterated the commitment of the United Nations to support Angola in continuing to strengthen initiatives for infection control, screening, treatment and vaccination of the population, congratulating the Ministry of Health "for the successes it has been achieving in the adequate response to covid-19".
