Ivory Coast May Bar Unvaccinated From Accessing Public Sites

(Bloomberg) -- Ivory Coast may prohibit people who haven’t received the Covid-19 vaccine from accessing public places, the West African country’s National Security Council said.

The government is considering banning unvaccinated people who fail to produce a negative coronavirus test from restaurants, bars, cinemas, stadiums, hotels, universities, large schools and other buildings, the council said in an emailed statement.

Ivory Coast is also preparing to start a “vast awareness campaign” to inoculate people deemed the most exposed in the economic capital, Abidjan, which remains the epicenter of the disease in the country, it said.

With a population of about 26 million people, Ivory Coast had 57,293 confirmed Covid cases and 488 deaths as of Sept. 8. More than 25% of those deaths occurred in August alone, and all of the those were unvaccinated people, it said.

Ivory Coast is the world’s biggest cocoa producer.

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