Algeria to start vaccination in January
The Algerian president, Abdelmajid Tebboune, ordered the prime minister to start making arrangements to purchase a vaccine against COVID-19. He announced this via his Twitter account. In the message, Tebboune called on Abdelaziz Djerad to "immediately chair a meeting with the scientific committee in charge of monitoring the epidemiological situation, to choose the most suitable vaccine against Covid 19 and to start the vaccination process from January 2021".
Djerad stated that Algeria would avoid any rush and would purchase the vaccine when it had sufficient guarantees. To date, therefore, Algeria has not collected the material or chosen the vaccine. While Covid-19 patients are generally treated with hydroxychloroquine.
President Tebboune sent the message from Germany, where he has been since 28 October, when he was seriously admitted to a hospital in Berlin after testing positive. He was admitted to Algiers, but his medical team recommended that he be transferred. Tebboune left for Germany four days before the consultation on the country's constitution and made his reappearance on 13 December in a five-minute video in which he stated that he was returning to Algeria "as soon as possible", visibly affected by the effects of the virus. In the recording Tebboune stated that he follows "daily, hour by hour, everything that is happening in Algeria".
Three days after the video, the Algerian government extended the night curfew and other restrictions in 34 provinces by 15 days, a decision that was prompted by the ravages of the pandemic. Indeed, Algeria, the first African state to recognise the case of Covid-19, is one of the countries in the region that has been hardest hit. The figures collected since the beginning of the virus show a total of 95,200 people infected and 2,666 dead. According to the authorities, seven people died yesterday. However, Covid-19 is not the only concern of Algerians.
President Tebboune, 75, celebrated his first anniversary as president of the country on 12 December. He was elected to replace Bouteflika after his abrupt departure following the popular uprisings that arose against his intention to stand again in the elections despite his deplorable state of health. However, Algeria still has a gerontocracy that is pulling the strings. What is more, in the event of the Tebboune's plausible death, his replacement would have been Salah Gudjil, the 89-year-old president of the Senate. This is exacerbating a dynamic that is in collision with Algeria's average age of 29.
The tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring, a series of popular movements that altered the status quo in the region, serves as a catalyst for the lack of representation of Algerian society among its leaders. The Algerian case was not one of the most prominent at the time, unlike countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, as Bouteflika held on to power, but the social conflict was revived in 2019. The promoters of the movement were students, who became the main representatives of the opposition to the regime.
Because last year Algerian society took to the streets again to demand reforms. Haizam Amirah Fernández, senior researcher on the Mediterranean and the Arab World at the Real Instituto Elcano and professor of International Relations at IE University, says that "there is little doubt that the mobilisations - drastically reduced during the Covid-19 pandemic - will return in the not too distant future".