At the St Joseph COVID Treatment Centre in Kinshasa, patients lie in ramshackle rooms breathing oxygen from old tanks.
The clinic has 38 beds, and all but one are occupied.
In a backyard littered with medical equipment, tents are needed to cope with the overflow.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) is the least vaccinated nation against COVID-19 in the world.
Now a fourth wave of the coronavirus threatens to put greater pressure on its rickety health system than at any time during the pandemic.
“We have experienced the three previous waves gradually, but in the fourth wave cases have jumped overnight,” said Francois Kajingulu, the head of St Joseph.
“On Monday, we had five to six cases and on Saturday we went straight from 30 to 36,” Kajingulu said.
The increase is part of an Africa-wide surge that saw weekly infections spike 83 percent in the middle of this month, driven by the Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2, although deaths remain low, the WHO said.
DR Congo registered 6,480 new cases in the week of Dec. 13 — more than double the number hit during its previous record week in June, WHO data showed.
The official infection tally in DR Congo, which has a young population and where few people get tested, is still low compared with many nations, but the low level of inoculations worries health officials, who say that unvaccinated populations increase the risk of new variants emerging.
Fewer than 300,000 people out of a population of 90 million have received at least one dose of vaccine, Reuters data showed, lower than anywhere else.
Hostile terrain, remote populations, insecurity and lack of funds have all hobbled vaccine rollouts.
The surge in cases has pushed authorities to ramp up inoculations and the weekly vaccination rate is at its highest yet.
A tented “Vaccinodrome” has been erected in Kinshasa, whose province has accounted for the vast majority of DR Congo’s more than 67,000 cases.
Health workers at the center are vaccinating about 200 people per day, but that is still below its 300 capacity, coordinator Jean-Claude Masumu said.
Kinshasa resident Popol Kabasale said the latest wave of infections had persuaded him to visit the center for a shot.
“Before we were in the dark,” he said after receiving a dose. “COVID really exists and to protect myself I’ve come to get the vaccine.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS