The reopening of travel to Kenya and other African countries is still being held back by the World Health Organisation and consequently by the governments of the richest nations, which are organising to vaccinate 90% of their citizens.
UE would like to start reopening in June to the safest countries, those with a coefficient of around 0.25% of new cases, i.e. 75 per 100,000 inhabitants, and only for vaccinated people. But the WHO recommends caution.
"There are not enough safety margins to reopen to international tourism," leaks the European Union, according to reports in the German press in recent days, "the countries of the sub-Saharan area are too far behind in vaccination campaigns".
In recent days, the WHO has coordinated the 74th general health meeting, virtually from Geneva, with delegates from the 194 countries worldwide that have signed up to directives and programmes to combat contagion.
The alarm raised by Director Tedros Ghebreyesus concerns the widely divergent numbers among the ten most developed nations on the planet, which have received 75% of the doses of vaccine distributed and are moving rapidly towards immunising a large part of their population, while poor and developing countries have so far used only 5% of the global supply.
Experts predict that the virus is likely to continue raging in countries with low inoculation rates due to the fact that for a variety of reasons they lack the power and resources to increase global vaccination supply on their own.
Between vaccine manufacturers and purchasers, only a small elite of nations have most of the doses available and are deciding the fate of the rest of the world," Ghebreyesus said. "It is no longer time for diploomatic discussions; it is time to think seriously about equitable distribution.
According to WHO, without starting to take direct action towards those states that are lagging behind, it is impossible to think of a safe resumption of intercontinental travel.
Some of the rich nations, including the US and France, have already committed to sharing their doses of vaccine. By the end of 2021, at least 30 million vaccines are expected to be diverted to Africa, regardless of what individual governments will be able to procure.
"Millions of people in richer nations have been vaccinated, while billions in poorer countries are still waiting. We must all work together to correct this situation," said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also the African Union's rotating president. "None of us can claim to be safe unless everyone else is safe too. We therefore call on leaders to support the initiative to urgently raise the funds needed to increase vaccine production worldwide.
Kenya is one of 180 countries that fall into the risk category and for which both the WHO and the countries most active in prevention consider it premature to reopen.
Appeals from many quarters are useless (such as the one launched by the Italians in Kenya through our media channels, which has more than 1,000 adhesions), especially if Nairobi does not start taking action to begin vaccinating thousands of people every day.
But the Kenyan Ministry of Health has admitted that it is still behind in securing even one million doses needed for booster shots: after the promise to receive 150,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the Democratic Republic of Congo, yesterday an agreement seems to have been reached with South Sudan to obtain another 72,000 doses that could soon expire.
In the meantime, the Covax programme should give an answer on how to remedy the stop in supplies to Africa, due to the emergency following the discovery of the 'Indian variant'.
According to the WHO, the 'nationalist' management of vaccines is causing growing dissatisfaction among poorer countries that cannot pay the high pharmaceutical prices, with large disparities between developed and developing countries expected to continue to hamper efforts to tackle the pandemic.
According to the WHO, for example, it was not yet time to vaccinate children in Europe and the US, it was time to secure frontline workers in other countries around the world.
"Countries that vaccinate children now do so at the risk of health workers and high-risk groups in other countries," the director said, "we understand that every government has a duty to its people. In time, there will be a sufficient supply for all, but for now there is not.
The final request is to divert 50 per cent of the doses produced from now on for the Covax programme as soon as possible and allocate them to the countries left behind.
Presumably they will continue to navigate by sight, collecting data and trying to unblock distributions, taking stock month by month.
With these priorities, tourism still seems to be cut off for a while, even if the wealthier countries have long been maintaining their airlines and "keeping quiet" many impatient compatriots who would like to travel again.
Once again, the economy could decide when and how the reopening takes place, even if, on the other hand, keeping the population within its own borders could boost the local hospitality industry and consequently all the induced activities and fiscal remittances of each individual country.