Algeria hardened its health policy in the face of the resurgence of contaminations caused by the rapid spread of the Delta variant. The government decided, Sunday, July 25, to extend the curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. (so far from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.) from Monday, for a period of 10 days, in 35 of the 58 wilayas. (prefectures) of the country, including Algiers, according to a statement released after a council of ministers. This decision is accompanied by new restrictive measures targeting leisure activities, in full summer vacation and when Algeria is experiencing a heat wave.  

Sports halls, youth centers, cultural centers, recreational areas and especially the beaches will be closed in the 35 prefectures concerned.

Cafés and restaurants will no longer be able to serve at the table and will have to be limited only to take-out.

Finally, public and private urban transport will be suspended during weekends throughout the country. 

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune advocated "an increase in the vaccination rate in the wilayas with high population density, being the first sources of contamination," the statement said.

He urged the government to achieve "the immediate objective of vaccinating 2.5 million people in Algiers and 50% of the populations of the wilayas of Oran, Constantine, Sétif and Ouargla", the most affected regions. 

Algeria has so far received 7.7 million doses of vaccines - Russian (Sputnik V), Swedish-British (AstraZeneca) and Chinese (Sinovac and Sinopharm) - for a population of 44 million inhabitants.

Epidemiologists estimate that at least 20 million Algerians should be vaccinated to achieve collective immunity. 

Chinese and Russian vaccine production

According to the Ministry of Pharmaceutical Industry, Algeria should start locally producing the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.

Chinese experts arrived on Friday to inspect the equipment and materials intended for the production of Sinovac in a factory of the state-owned pharmaceutical group Saidal, in Constantine (northeast). 

A few months ago, Algiers announced that the Russian vaccine Sputnik V would be produced in the territory from September. For its part, the Institut Pasteur d'Algérie announced on Sunday on its Facebook page that on "July 15, the Delta variant has supplanted all the other variants circulating until then, representing 71% of the viruses in circulation" . The Institute predicts "a rate higher than 90% in the coming weeks". 

The most populous country in the Maghreb has been facing a sharp rise in contamination for several weeks, while hospital services are saturated and medical staff are strained. Some large hospitals lack oxygen mainly due to problems with inventory management and distribution. The daily record of infections was broken on Friday, with 1,350 cases, according to the Ministry of Health.  

Officially, some 160,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 4,000 deaths have been recorded in Algeria since the start of the epidemic at the end of February 2020. All public gatherings - especially on the occasion of weddings and circumcisions but also political demonstrations - remain banned everywhere on the territory.

The organizer of a busy wedding in Jijel (east), denounced on social networks, was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison with a committal warrant, according to local media. 

With AFP  

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