Tunisia, in great difficulty in the face of a new rebound in the Covid-19 epidemic, received 1.5 million doses of vaccines provided by Italy on Sunday, announced the Presidency of the Republic.
To discover
Covid-19: what we know about the Delta variant
Tunisian President Kais Saied, who seized power since Sunday and suspended parliament, greeted this shipment in person and sharply criticized the former government's handling of the Covid-19 epidemic.
"
More than a year has passed, meetings follow one another, but people are hospitalized and die by the hundreds every day, in addition to the spread of contamination,
" he denounced.
To read also: Pierre Vermeren: "Tunisia, witness house of democracy in the Maghreb, can it change?"
Kais Saied, argues "
imminent perils
" facing Tunisia, plunged for months in a deep political crisis, and hit hard by a deadly peak of coronavirus, to justify his seizure of power on Sunday, by invoking the Constitution.
His main opponent, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, calls out a “
coup
”.
Faced with the spread of the Delta variant and the lack of oxygen in its hospitals, Tunisia is currently in a critical situation.
This small Maghreb country of almost 12 million inhabitants has one of the worst official death rates in the world, with almost 20,000 deaths linked to the new coronavirus.
In an attempt to avoid a health disaster, donations of vaccines have been pouring in from around the world for a few weeks.
On Friday, Tunis received one million doses of vaccines from the Moderna laboratory, donated by the United States.
Thanks to this wave of donations, the country hopes to vaccinate around 50% of its population by mid-October, according to the authorities.
After taking power, Kais Saied announced Wednesday evening the establishment of a crisis unit to manage the Covid-19 pandemic, supervised by a senior military officer.
