Morocco Enters COVID Alert Level Amid Raging Third Wave

Rabat – Dr. Mouad Merabet, the coordinator of Morocco’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center, has declared COVID-19’s alert level as Morocco enters its fourth week of the now spiraling third wave.

Dr. Merabet published a brief commentary on Morocco’s COVID-19 pandemic situation on January 9, 2021, on his personal LinkedIn account.

He stated: “Unsurprisingly, new contaminations continue to increase very rapidly for the 4th consecutive week, with a weekly change record: 231.3%, never recorded since the start of community transmission of the virus in Morocco.”

In his post, Dr. Mrabet addressed the doubling of weekly rates of positive cases around the country. Nationwide, the weekly positive cases rate has moved from 10.2% to 21.7% in the past week.

While very high at the national level, the level of COVID-19 transmission varies at the regional level, he noted.

For instance, Casa-Settat, Rabat-Sale-Kenitra, Marrakech-Safi regions have the highest transmission rates in the country, while the northern and southern territories have lower transmission levels with a three-week lag from the center. This means peaks will be reached at different dates around the country.

In addition, the third wave that the country is going through “is very fast with a doubling period of 4 days while it was 8 days in the first 4 weeks of the Delta wave,” Dr. Mrabet commented. He added, “the objective is still to reduce the severity and mortality of the wave.”

To limit the damage caused by the third wave, Dr. Mrabet called for vaccination (especially the third dose) and the respect of preventive measures and treatment protocol.

In terms of preventive measures, he stated that people with symptoms should rapidly test and start treatment, inform others of their situation, respect self-isolation at home and be careful to prevent virus transmission.

Morocco reached 1,004,706 confirmed cases, of whom 952,751 recovered and 14,915 passed away, as of January 10, 2021. To date, 24,597,287 Moroccans received the first dose and 3,525,886 had their booster shots.