Australia wants to deliver one million doses of vaccines to Papua New Guinea

Released on : 17/03/2021 – 09:27Modified on : 17/03/2021 – 11:58

The’Australia On Wednesday, March 17, AstraZeneca and the European Union faced a surge in covid-19 and asked for emergency access to one million doses of the vaccine purchased for delivery to Papua New Guinea.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia wanted to use quantities ordered and paid for him to help Papua New Guinea, Located in the north of Australia, To combat coronavirus.

“AstraZeneca and AstraZeneca and European authorities put in place a formal request from Australia, but also Papua New Guinea, a developing country that desperately needs these vaccines, to have access to one million doses for our order from AstraZeneca,” Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

read & gt; & gt; : Italy blocks export of AstraZeneca doses to Australia

“We signed a contract for these quantities and we paid for them. We want to see these vaccines come here so that we can support our closest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, to cope [à ses besoins en vaccins]”He said.

Australian action comes as Italy blocked astrazeneca vaccine distribution in early March Produced on European soil and destined for Australia. Rome justified the move by citing “the persistent lack of vaccines and supply delays on the part of AstraZeneca” in the EU and Italy.

Brussels did not oppose the bloc decided by Italy, saying other EU countries could do the same.

“In the next few weeks, there’s going to be a spike”

Papua New Guinea, one of the Pacific’s poorest countries, has officially recorded more than 1,000 new covid-19 cases in 1 to 8 million people^Er March, a doubling of total pollutants since the disease arrived in this country a year ago.

But a slowdown in the testing process is leading to fears that the virus is spreading more rapidly among the population. And officials have warned that the country’s fragile health system is struggling to cope with the pandemic.

Papua New Guinea’s Health Minister jelda Wong told AFP her country, whose health system is badly underfunded, was already doing “everything it can” to prevent the pandemic from spiralling out of control, asking for international help.

“In the coming weeks, there is going to be an increase in the number of new infections,” he said, raising fears of a health disaster in his country.

“All these facts are signs that there is a major pandemic”

Australia’s top medical official Paul Kelly says hospitals in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, are detecting the virus in half of newly admitted patients.

“Half of women coming [dans ces hôpitaux] They are positive because they are pregnant. We are seeing a large number of frontline health workers in Papua New Guinea coming in with covid-19,” Paul Kelly said. “All these facts are signs that there is a major pandemic [dans le pays].”

In addition to AstraZeneca and the EU’s Australian approach announcement, Scott Morrison said Australia already has a support program in place, including sending 8,000 doses of the vaccine to immunize Papua New Guinea, its former colony, medical groups, Personal Protective Equipment and health workers.

The virus is largely under control in Australia, which has recorded more than 29,000 cases since the outbreak began. Recently, outbreaks have been rare, which has made it possible to loosen health restrictions across the country.

But officials in Queensland, a state in northern Australia, told AFP that half of the hospitalized Covid-19 patients in that state were from Papua New Guinea.

With AFP