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Morocco has managed to manage the response to the coronavirus by opting, since the appearance of the first case, for anticipation, which includes the strict application of containment, the rapid acquisition of masks and respirators, and early engagement. vaccination with several laboratories.
In the first phase, the government acted quickly to protect its fragile health system from collapse, and after achieving this goal, it directed its efforts to ensure herd immunity through vaccination.
To avoid the uncontrollable pandemic, Morocco declared on March 22, during an extraordinary meeting of the government, “a state of health emergency”.
This measure limited the movements of citizens to the essential professions or actions strictly necessary to obtain supplies or respond to a health emergency; After three months of strict enforcement, it was then relaxed, although the curfew continues at 9:00 p.m. and restrictions on interprovincial travel.
In parallel, the Moroccan government began simultaneous negotiations with several vaccine manufacturers in April 2020 to guarantee their acquisition in an international market which suffers from a great shortage of production.
This effort has reduced the number of deaths per day of the 92 deceased (record recorded on November 20) to just 4 in the last 24 hours – now the death rate is 1.8 / 100 -, while the occupancy of resuscitation beds dedicated to Covid-19 increased from 39% to 13%.
Likewise, daily contagion has gone from a high of 6,195 cases on November 12 to 431 cases in the past 24 hours.
The restrictions on the movement of citizens were firmly enforced: the security services recorded a total of 968,967 violations of the health emergency law in 2020 and brought to justice 196,972 people, perpetrators of these offenses.
On April 7, 2020, when 83 people had died in the country as a result of the virus, the government imposed the mandatory nature of the face mask, and established sentences of between one month and three months in prison for those who did not wear it. not.
To make the masks affordable, the executive imposed a maximum price of 0.80 dirhams (0.07 euro) per unit, and mobilized a series of national industries to mass produce them (eight million masks per day since last May) and distribute them throughout the country. , at a rate which has enabled it to export them beyond its borders.
Likewise, the Ministry of Health (which had a budget of 1,740 million euros in 2020) provided around 1,300 resuscitation beds, with a medical team of 985 specialists, and purchased 550 ventilators, among other equipment.
Morocco has already vaccinated more than 4 million people and has just added the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to those of AstraZeneca and Sinopharm (British and Chinese respectively), which it is already administering; In addition, he announced the acquisition of the American Johnson & Johnson now that the WHO has approved it.
Moroccan Health Minister Khaled Ait Taleb attributed the advance of vaccines, a unique case in Africa, to the country’s early commitment to vaccination as a measure of herd immunity “and to reduce damage health, social and economic “, he underlined. in an interview with Efe.
Ait Taleb explained that Sputnik V has been approved by the Moroccan scientific committee and that his ministry has ordered one million doses from the Russian manufacturer, preferably to be delivered in two batches, in (March and April).
The National Vaccination Campaign in Morocco, which aims to vaccinate 80% of Moroccans (30 million), began on January 29 and should end at the end of June, with priority given to the elderly, medical staff, the police and the faculty. . .
The vaccination, free for everyone over 18 (including foreign residents) was ordered by King Mohamed VI and has become a success story, reaching an average daily figure of 100,000 injections.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) congratulated Morocco on being one of ten countries in the world to have won the vaccination challenge, with 4,169,133 vaccinated with the first dose until yesterday and 1,224,959 with the double dose.
Looking ahead, Ait Taleb noted that the first dose vaccination rate will slow in the coming days due to global supply difficulties, but he is confident that the national campaign will return to its optimal pace soon.
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