MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – As wealthier nations race to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Somalia remains the rare place where much of the population has not taken the coronavirus seriously. Some fear it has turned out to be more deadly than anyone else.
“Our people are certainly not using any kind of protective measures, masks or social distancing,” Abdirizak Yusuf Hirabeh, the government’s COVID-19 incident manager, said in an interview. “If you’re traveling around town (from Mogadishu) or across the country, no one even talks about it.” And yet infections are on the rise, he said.
It’s places like Somalia, the nation in the Horn of Africa torn apart by three decades of conflict, that will be the last to see COVID-19 vaccines in any significant amount. As part of the country is still in the hands of the Al-Qaeda-linked extremist group Al-Shabab, the virus is at risk of becoming endemic in some hard-to-reach areas – a fear of parts of Africa amid the slow arrival of vaccines.
“There is no real or practical investigation into the matter,” said Hirabeh, who is also the director of the Martini Hospital in Mogadishu, the largest COVID-19 treating patient, who saw seven new patients the day he spoke. He recognized that in Somalia, neither the facilities nor the equipment are adequate to deal with the virus.
Less than 27,000 tests for the virus have been conducted in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, one of the lowest rates in the world. Fewer than 4,800 cases have been confirmed, including at least 130 deaths.
Some fear that the virus will sink into the population as yet another poorly diagnosed but deadly fever.
For 45-year-old street beggar Hassan Mohamed Yusuf, that fear has turned into almost certainty. “In the beginning, we saw this virus as just another form of the flu,” he said.
Then three of his young children died of a cough and high fever. As residents of a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict or drought, they had no access to coronavirus testing or proper care.
At the same time, Yusuf said, the virus hampered his efforts to find money to treat his family as “we can’t get close enough” to people to beg.
In the beginning of the pandemic, the Somali government tried to take some measures to limit the spread of the virus, closing all schools and closing all domestic and international flights. Cell phones were ringing with messages about the virus.
But social distance has long since disappeared from the country’s streets, markets, or restaurants. On Thursday, some 30,000 people crammed into a stadium in Mogadishu for a regional soccer game without face masks or other antivirus measures.
Mosques in the Muslim nation were never restricted for fear of the reactions.
“Our religion taught us hundreds of years ago that we should wash our hands, faces, and even legs five times a day and that our women should wear face veils because they are often weaker. So that’s the whole prevention of the disease, if it really exists, ”said Abdulkadir Sheikh Mohamud, an imam in Mogadishu.
“I have left the matter to Allah to protect us,” said Ahmed Abdulle Ali, a shop owner in the capital. He attributed the increase in coughing during prayers to the change of seasons.
A more important protective factor is the relative youth of the Somali population, said Dr. Abdurahman Abdullahi Abdi Bilaal, who works at a clinic in the capital. More than 80% of the country’s population is under the age of 30.
“The virus is here, absolutely, but people’s resilience is due to age,” he said.
It’s the lack of post-mortem examinations in the country that keeps the true extent of the virus unnoticed, he said.
The next challenge in Somalia is not only getting COVID-19 vaccines, but convincing the population to accept them.
That will take time, “just the same as it took for our people to believe in the polio or measles vaccines,” said a concerned Bilal.
Hirabeh, who was in charge of the Somali virus response, agreed that “our people have little faith in the vaccines,” and said many Somalis hate the needles. He called for serious awareness campaigns to change your mind.
The logistics of any introduction of COVID-19 vaccines is another major concern. Hirabeh said Somalia expects the first vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, but he is concerned that the country will not be able to deal with a vaccine like the Pfizer vaccine that must be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius.
“One that can be kept between minus 10 and minus 20 would be suitable for the Third World like our country,” he said.