Rabat – The director of the Rabat biotechnology laboratory and member of Morocco’s scientific committee Azeddine Ibrahimi believes that Morocco will see some respite from COVID-19 come September.
Ibrahimi shared on Facebook his answers to some common questions that he gets from the Moroccan population, from general information on COVID-19 to contextualizing Morocco’s current epidemiological situation. In his latest series of answers he stressed the importance of vaccination in order to achieve some measure of return to normalcy.
“I think that the delta affected the majority of Moroccans, and only a small reserve remained of those who were not infected with it,” Ibrahimi wrote, adding that “as we reached the vaccination rate of 50 percent of the population in the middle of September… we will see, God willing, an improvement in the epidemiological situation [in Morocco].”
Ibrahimi said that Morocco must speed up the vaccination rate, “so that we can gradually return to what we were experiencing at the beginning of July.”
But while some relief might be on the horizon, Morocco is not quite there yet. The scientist believes that we are currently going through the peak of the latest wave of COVID-19, and while the data suggests that the North African country is approaching the flattening of the curve, the situation is not as straightforward as it seems.
Since Morocco’s different regions have experienced the wave at different times, while the total numbers might decrease due to the recovery of the Souss and Marrakesh regions, others are experiencing their own flare ups. He predicts that the regions of Rabat and Tangier-Tetouan will be next to see a spike in cases in the coming weeks.
In the same social media post, he dwelled on the idea of introducing the third shot of the vaccine in Morocco, citing studies suggesting the vaccine’s effectiveness decreases after seven months, particularly in elderly people and vulnerable patients.
“I think it’s Time in Morocco to recommend this to people over seventy and those with chronic diseases,” he wrote on Facebook.
