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Algeria has ordered all elementary and high schools to close for 10 days as Covid-19 infection rates surge in the North African country.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune cancelled classes starting Thursday after an emergency meeting of the Council of Ministers, members of the Covid-19 scientific committee and the country’s security officials.
Entry requirements were also tightened at airports.
A statement from the president said university staff and health authorities should decide whether to continue in-person classes.
Algeria is battling infections from both the delta variant infections and the fast-spreading omicron variant. On Wednesday, health officials reported a daily record of 1,359 omicron cases and 12 deaths.
Mr Tebboune urged officials to set a “robust testing structure” in public heath facilities and private laboratories.
In December, Algeria started requiring a vaccine passport to enter many public venues, seeking to boost the country’s low inoculation rate and overcome hesitancy that has left millions of vaccines unused. Less than a quarter of Algeria’s population has been vaccinated.
The pass is also required for anyone entering or leaving Algeria, as well as for entering sports facilities, cinemas, theatres, museums, town halls and other sites such as hammams.
Real death rate could be higher
Official figures show Algeria has seen 6,433 Covid-related deaths since the pandemic began, but members of the government’s scientific committee admit the real figure is much higher, AP reported.
Some Algerians keep their infections secret, worried they will be blamed for getting the virus, which then puts others at risk, the news agency said.
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
ICC T20 Team of 2021
Jos Buttler, Mohammad Rizwan, Babar Azam, Aiden Markram, Mitchell Marsh, David Miller, Tabraiz Shamsi, Josh Hazlewood, Wanindu Hasaranga, Mustafizur Rahman, Shaheen Afridi
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
