New HIV / AIDS infections and deaths may rise as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted prevention measures, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said.
After that, who is also the United Nations Under-Secretary-General, said that during the first phase of the pandemic in particular, fewer people chose to get tested and some dropped out due to long lines at clinics or other public safety measures. that prevented access to prevention measures.
“We anticipate more deaths and more infections in the coming years as a result of these outages.”He declared on the occasion of World AIDS Day.
After that said vaccine nationalism, in which rich countries buy vaccine supplies and poor nations wait around, has been “one of the saddest parts of the place where we are”.
Because rich countries have hoarded vaccines, just over 7% of the African population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
Some scientists believe that could have been a factor in the development of omicron, the new variant first discovered in southern Africa that has raised alarm about the possibilities that vaccines are not effective against it.
“For most of us it is not a coincidence that it arose in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are many underdiagnosed HIV infections or immunosuppressed people.“, he claimed John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
Moore He said that immunosuppressed people cannot clear the infection as quickly as those with healthy immune systems, and that a suboptimal immune response can allow the virus to continue to mutate.
“This is how the other variants are believed to have arisen: in immunosuppressed people”, He declared.
Byanyima said research shows that people with HIV are no more likely than others to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but that once infected, they are at a much higher risk of developing a disease. serious illness.
“So for developing countries with a high burden of HIV, this is critical”, He indicated about access to vaccines against COVID-19.
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