Africa needs to speed up vaccinations six-fold if it hopes to beat the Covid-19 pandemic, and people on the continent should not become complacent because of reports Omicron is milder than previous variants, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Africa director has said, according to Reuters.

The WHO's Matshidiso Moeti said around six million Africans were being vaccinated per week, but “that number needs to increase exponentially to 36 million a week to put countries on the path to beating this pandemic.”

She said she was worried that reports that the Omicron variant was milder than earlier strains of the virus would undermine vaccine programmes.

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