March 01, 2021
Coronavirus – Tunisia: High-ranking government officials reportedly benefited from the vaccine
According to MPs Badreddine Gammoudi and Yassine Ayari, Tunisia has received a few doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, which were distributed to senior state and security officials. All in absolute secrecy .
Ayari said that the UAE ambassador informed Tunisian diplomats that his country has donated a hundred doses to the presidency of the republic.
A few months ago, Tunisia announced that, on receipt of the vaccine, senior government officials would be given priority to be vaccinated (along with vulnerable individuals and health personnel). This had already been heavily criticised because there is no justification for politicians or security officials to be given this special treatment. They have important and indispensable functions, of course, but they, as individuals, are not irreplaceable.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 27, 2021
IMF: Wage bill in Tunisia needs to be reduced
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a statement on Friday, 26 February 2021, following the completion of Article IV consultations with Tunisia. The Board noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Tunisia hard and led to an unprecedented economic slowdown. Real GDP is estimated to have contracted by 8.2 per cent in 2020, the most pronounced economic slowdown since the country became independent.
The rise in the unemployment rate, to 16.2% at the end of September, has disproportionately affected low-skilled workers, women and young people, and contributes to social discontent. Inflation has slowed due to the contraction of domestic demand and lower international fuel prices. The current account deficit narrowed to 6.8 per cent of GDP due to lower import demand and resilient remittances, despite a sharp decline in exports and a collapse in tourism receipts.
Directors recommended that fiscal policy and reforms should be aimed at reducing the deficit. In this context, they stress the need to reduce the wage bill and limit energy subsidies, while prioritizing health spending and investment and protecting targeted social spending. Directors noted that Tunisia’s public debt would become unsustainable unless a strong, credible and broadly supported reform programme is adopted. They also called on the authorities to make the tax system more equitable and pro-growth, and encouraged measures to clear the arrears that have accumulated in the social security system.
Directors stressed the need for wide-ranging reforms in state-owned enterprises to reduce contingent liabilities. They encouraged the authorities to adopt a plan to reduce the fiscal and financial risks of SOEs, strengthen corporate governance and improve financial reporting and transparency.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Louzir: authorisation granted for the marketing of the AstraZeneca vaccine
The chairman of the steering committee of the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19 and director of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis, Hechmi Louzir said that an authorization was granted last Thursday by the health ministry for the marketing of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Tunisia.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 26, 2021
Tunisia to receive 100,000 doses of Chinese vaccine
Beijing has pledged to offer 100,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine free of charge in a few days time to Tunisia, where the vaccination planned as part of the global Covax programme has been delayed by a month, according to the Tunisian presidency. Neither the type of vaccine provided nor the precise date of arrival has yet been determined, the Tunisian presidency told AFP on Friday.
China, whose ambassador to Tunisia, Zheng Jianguo, has confirmed the news, has developed two vaccines against the coronavirus: Sinopharm and Sinovac. Tunis, which has not yet started its vaccination campaign, announced last week that it would postpone it for a month because of a delay in the arrival of the vaccines.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Emrhod – COVID-19 poll: 38% of Tunisians say they are concerned
Only 38% of Tunisians say they are concerned about the health situation in Tunisia in these times of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest survey by Emrhod Consulting*, commissioned by Business News and Attessia and published on Friday 26th February 2021. This rate is slightly higher than that recorded a year ago. According to the survey conducted in March 2020, the rate of Tunisians concerned about the health situation was 32%.
*The Emrhod survey was carried out between 22 and 25 February 2021 among a representative sample of 1420 people from the twenty-four governorates of Tunisia and over the age of eighteen.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 25, 2021
Why hasn’t Tunisia received any vaccines yet?
Questioned about this delay, Hachemi Louzir, director of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis and member of the Scientific Council in charge of managing the coronavirus pandemic, tried to shed light on the issue during press briefings and debates on the dossier. For him, Tunisia has not experienced at the beginning of the crisis (January-June 2020) a real wave, it is just what he calls “a wavelet”.
And when the laboratories, Pfizer and Moderna, began communicating in the June-July 2020 period about the discovery of vaccines against VID19, Tunisia had very few cases of contamination.
Despite the fact that it had been preparing its files since May 2020 to acquire the vaccines, it was not, commercially speaking, of great interest to these laboratories. With this limited number of cases, for several weeks, Tunisia was also unable to be a partner in the clinical phase, i.e. for the experimentation of vaccines, which gives the advantage of being served by the former.
Morocco has been a partner in certain clinical phases. In particular, it was a partner for a Chinese vaccine. This explains why it was among the first to start its vaccination campaign.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Kaïs Saïed and Africa, the big misunderstanding?
When Tunisian representatives are asked about a more than ambiguous relationship with Africa, they all inevitably evoke Ifriqiya, the ancient name of the territory of modern Tunisia which would have given its name to the continent. A refrain that does not hide the lack of dynamism of the relationship with the continent.
In an uncompromising Facebook status, Anis Jaziri, president of the Tunisia-Africa Business Council (TABC), is the name of the president’s missed appointments: the Russia-Africa Economic Forum in Sochi (open in 2019 when Kaïs Saïed takes office), the “Compact with Africa” summit two months later, the Berlin Conference on the crisis in Libya in January 2020, the China-Africa Virtual Summit… But also major international meetings such as the Paris Peace Forum and the Davos Forum last January. “The president’s absence at the AU summit is incomprehensible and unforgivable, I think that the internal conflicts that cross the country have taken over these major issues and that bothers us,” he told Jeune Afrique.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Advocacy for joint Arab action against COVID-19
The exceptional health crisis calls for exceptional joint Arab action to address the resulting difficulties in our countries, argues the 2nd Vice-President of the Tunisian Parliament, Tarek Fetiti.
Speaking via webinar on the occasion of the 27th session of the Executive Committee of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union, Thursday, 25 February 2021, Fetiti stressed the need to strengthen inter-parliamentary dialogue and to redouble efforts to identify common solutions, says a parliamentary statement. “The Assembly of People’s Representatives is closely following the situation in several Arab countries and hopes that our brothers will succeed in overcoming them by showing national unity to achieve stability, development and reconstruction,” he said.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
COVID-19 / Tunisian variant: myth or reality?
The Regional Director of Health in Tunis, Tarek Ben Naceur said Thursday, February 25, 2021 that the existence of a new variant of the new coronavirus COVID-19 in Tunisia has not yet been confirmed. Tarek Ben Naceur who was speaking on Mosaïque FM explained that these are mere suspicions adding that the authorities concerned are 98% sure that no new variant has been detected so far in Tunisia. He assured that the official announcement will be made tomorrow after the publication of the results of the analyses.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 24, 2021
Date of arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine in Tunisia: Hechmi Louzir’s latest “update”.
The soap opera of the expected arrival date of the vaccine against COVID-19 in Tunisia continues… while to date, nothing has been received. Yesterday, Tuesday, February 23, 2021, the head of the steering committee of the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19, Hechmi Louzir, gave us the latest update.
In a statement given to national radio, Louzir said the first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, estimated at 93,000 doses, will arrive in Tunisia, via the Covax initiative, at the end of February.
In March, a first batch of 2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive, “in addition to the Sputnik vaccine and quantities of vaccinations through the African Union estimated at 2.4 million doses”, adds the director of the Institut Pasteur in Tunis. Nevertheless, today, most Tunisians can only believe in the vaccine’s arrival when it is combined with the past.
The study, which lasted 3 months, showed that 54% of the staff are victims of psychological fatigue and 35% of them show symptoms of nervous tension.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Date of arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine in Tunisia: Hechmi Louzir’s latest “update”.
The soap opera of the expected arrival date of the vaccine against COVID-19 in Tunisia continues… while to date, nothing has been received. Yesterday, Tuesday, February 23, 2021, the head of the steering committee of the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19, Hechmi Louzir, gave us the latest update.
In a statement given to national radio, Louzir said the first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, estimated at 93,000 doses, will arrive in Tunisia, via the Covax initiative, at the end of February.
In March, a first batch of 2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive, “in addition to the Sputnik vaccine and quantities of vaccinations through the African Union estimated at 2.4 million doses”, adds the director of the Institut Pasteur in Tunis. Nevertheless, today, most Tunisians can only believe in the vaccine’s arrival when it is combined with the past.
The study, which lasted 3 months, showed that 54% of the staff are victims of psychological fatigue and 35% of them show symptoms of nervous tension.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
A Tunisian variant of COVID-19, really? The opinion of Sonia Ben Cheikh, former Minister of Health
The health authorities have announced, since 20 February 2021, that a “Tunisian variant” of COVID-19 has been detected in two people: one was young (17 years old) and in better health, the other, aged 70, died at the Mongi Slim University Hospital Centre in La Marsa (peace be upon him). But can we really speak of a Tunisian variant of the virus, as is the case with the British and Brazilian? For the former Minister of Health, Sonia Ben Cheikh, it is still too early to mention such a possibility.
“Explorations and sequencing are still ongoing. We cannot announce, directly, that a Tunisian variant exists. Explorations must continue around the two cases detected, especially since the sequencing is not yet complete. This is how we will be able to determine the level of propagation of the mutation, and it is through mass testing that we will be able to see what is happening around these two cases,” she said in an interview with Réalités Online, adding that we must wait for confirmation from Tunisian scientists on the subject, who are doing “a colossal and serious job”.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 23, 2021
Saied meets with ambassadors from EU member states
Kais Saied was speaking on Tuesday during a meeting at the Carthage Palace with a delegation of ambassadors of European Union countries accredited to Tunis led by EU ambassador Marcus Cornaro. The fight against corruption, the restitution of looted funds, the acquisition of vaccines against COVID-19 and mega projects such as the medical city of Kairouan and a TGV linking Bizerte to southern Tunisia, remain no less important than other partnership projects with the EU, he noted.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
New COVID variant: Algeria closes its borders with Tunisia
According to various concordant security and customs sources, the Algerian authorities decided Tuesday evening 23 February to close their borders with Tunisia, and to suspend the delivery of special passage permits.
Although the Algerian authorities have not communicated through official channels about the causes of this sudden surprise border closure, the same sources claim that this unilateral decision could be related to the appearance in Tunisia of a new local strain of coronavirus.
But the unexpected nature of the announcement in question seems all the more surprising given that President Kais Saïed regularly boasts of the special relationship he enjoys with his counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to the point that Carthage has recently taken advantage of the imminent shipment of thousands of Algerian vaccines in the form of a donation. A donation that has still not arrived since it was announced with great fanfare on 14 January 2021.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
USAID donates equipment to support 33 regional hospitals in their response to COVID-19
The U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is donating $4 million in much-needed laboratory and case management equipment to the Tunisian government, which will increase the capacity of Tunisia’s 33 regional hospitals to respond to COVID-19.
In partnership with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the U.S. government has delivered the first of three lots of critical equipment that will provide the necessary support to hospitals across the country as they strive to meet the needs of patients suffering from COVID-19.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
NATO supports Tunisia in dealing with COVID-19
Tunisia, a NATO partner, has just received 100,000 FFP2 masks and 15,000 disposable suits to deal with the pandemic. The NATO Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) is making the donation. This follows Tunisia’s request for international assistance to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result, Tunisia will receive equipment. These are supplied to the main military hospitals. These include the military hospitals in Tunis, Sfax, Bizerte and Gabes, as well as other military medical facilities.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
Tunisia will host the multinational military exercise “African Lion”.
Cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the new edition of the African Lion will, according to the commander, see the participation of nearly 10 thousand soldiers of several nationalities. Notably from the United States, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
The Tunisian variant of the COVID is not really one.
Dr. Habiba Zahi, former Minister of Health, announced via his Facebook page that the COVID variant that has been constantly talked about in recent days in Tunisia is not really a variant. Insofar as it is only a virus that has undergone modifications to one of its components. This is common during the life of a virus.
She explained that this is not a VOC (Variant Of Concern), where one would have to rely on epidemiological data and arguments (increase in the number of cases), clinical criteria and virological criteria, which is not yet the case in Tunisia.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
February 22, 2021
COVID-19: Is the vaccine really effective against the Tunisian variant?
A new variant of the coronavirus has recently been discovered in Tunisia. In this context, Director General of Public Health Fayçal Ben Salah announced that the new variant has similarities with those in the UK and South Africa. For his part, the member of the scientific committee of the coronavirus, Anis Guellouz said and that according to the Pasteur Institute which is conducting studies on the degree of its spread and according to the first results, this variant is not imported. Guellouz, on another point, specified that the vaccines acquired by Tunisia are effective against the new strains.
For more information, please consult (in French) the following link.
