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Coronavirus: what is behind Africa’s apparent resistance to the pandemic
May 12, 2020
The African continent has so far about 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
Since the first case in Africa was reported on February 14, the world media, experts, governments and even the World Health Organization (WHO) have predicted a “catastrophe” on the continent.
Although experts warn that it is too early to claim victory, the “impending disaster” predicted by John Nkengasong, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa, has not yet occurred.
While Europe accounts for more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, the United States exceeds 1.3 million and Latin America is close to 250,000, the African continent has so far 55,000 infections.
Its relatively low number of deaths is even more surprising: until May 8, this region of the world registered just over 2 thousand deaths, much less than other continents or even compared to a city like New York, which has already passed 20 thousand deaths.
These figures are more impressive given the fact that Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, with 1.2 billion inhabitants.
But what is behind the African continent’s apparent resistance to the coronavirus pandemic and why are there so few reported cases of covid-19?
Diversity of approaches
The most affected African countries, until May 11, are South Africa, with 10,015 cases, Egypt with 9,400, Morocco with 6,063 and Algeria with 5,723. Together, they represent almost 50% of all infections in Africa.
Some experts argue that the explanation for the supposed exception that the continent has become is that local health systems are unable to do enough tests to detect more cases of covid-19, mainly due to a lack of resources.
But others assert that other factors also influence this situation. Anne Soy, the BBC’s deputy editor in Africa, explains that there is indeed a complex situation on a continent with 53 countries that have confirmed the presence of the virus and have adopted different strategies to deal with it.
“There are those who have taken drastic measures from the beginning and where the number of cases continues to increase, however, there are others who are still in denial and are not implementing measures to prevent the spread of the disease, such as Tanzania,” says Soy.
Africa has a relatively low number of infections and deaths when compared to other regions of the world (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
Tanzania’s President John Magufuli is one of the few world leaders to continue to minimize the severity of the virus. Last week, he questioned the accuracy of the tests for covid-19 and dismissed the head of the national health laboratory in charge of carrying out the tests, denouncing a “cheat”.
Magufuli had already asked Tanzanians to pray for the coronavirus to disappear, and his government does not offer daily updates on the progress of the outbreak.
Rapid reactions from African countries
Despite some exceptions, most African countries have taken action “more quickly than the rest of the world,” notes Soy.
“Rwanda was one of the first to implement confinement when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases. They closed the border and stopped international flights,” he said.
South Africa, the continent’s country that has reported the most infections so far, has since March 27 imposed one of the strictest isolation regimes in the world, banning all commercial flights and even the sale of drinks and cigarettes.
But mainly due to the slump in South Africa’s economic activity, its health officials began to relax some measures last week.
Experience with epidemics
Although the coronavirus pandemic is the most serious health crisis of our generation, it is far from the first. Especially in Africa, a continent that has faced severe epidemics of malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, HIV and Ebola.
All of these diseases took lives, but they also forced the African scientific and medical community to innovate.
“The African population is used to reacting quickly, to resorting to volunteers in rural areas. I think that has allowed them to circulate information on preventive measures and apply them in time,” says Karl Blanchet, specialist in global health and health emergencies at the Center Geneva for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (Cerah).
The recent Ebola epidemic that hit West Africa, with greater intensity between 2014 and 2016, caused havoc in countries like Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and left more than 11,000 dead.
Although WHO declared the end of the health emergency in the region in March 2016, authorities are still on alert in some of the countries most affected by the outbreak due to the emergence of isolated cases.
“Ebola was a problem that still existed when the covid-19 pandemic was declared. This means that some African countries already had detection infrastructure at airports. Public health officials and non-contact thermometers were already positioned at the entrance doors,” explains Soy.
The ebola outbreak also taught Africa the importance of detecting cases quickly, treating confirmed patients and isolating communities, says the BBC journalist.
“Because of that epidemic, people have even stopped shaking hands in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have become aware that this is important,” he adds.
A less globalized continent
Frederique Jacquerioz, an African public health specialist from the team of tropical and humanitarian medicine at the Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, estimates that another factor that may explain Africa’s resistance to the pandemic is the low circulation between the countries of the continent and the rest of the world.
“The first confirmed cases in Africa were young people, Africans or Europeans, who traveled, returned to Africa and brought the virus with them,” says the doctor.
Rwanda imposed containment measures when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases.
“In a globalized world, this was one of the factors that fueled the spread of the virus in Europe, where groups of young people spend weekends in different cities. Perhaps in Africa, in that sense, there is less mobility between countries.”
This hypothesis is supported by several experts. Blanchet, from Cerah, gives as an example three of the countries that have so far been most affected by the virus: South Africa, Egypt and Algeria.
“They are the countries with the largest number of air connections with China. The exception is Ethiopia, which despite not being in this group, has a direct connection with the Asian country. But it has not yet been affected by the pandemic. This is something that it cannot be explained, “he says.
Is there a demographic factor?
The African demographic pyramid is another element that may have helped the death toll in the region to be no greater: Africa is the continent with the youngest population in the world.
Blanchet believes in this hypothesis and points out that “the average age in Africa is 19.7 years, while in Europe it is around 40 years, for example”.
Although Anne Soy recognizes that this could be one of the factors, she warns that there are still no scientific studies to support this theory.
“It may be one of the advantages of Africa, but at the same time, you also have a large population of malnourished children, with a weaker immune system, than the rest of the world population, which makes them more vulnerable. This means that would we have to see more African children affected than in the rest of the planet? “asks the journalist.
The risks of the continent
On Friday, the WHO warned that the coronavirus in Africa could “burn slowly” for several years and kill about 190,000 people in the next 12 months.
That warning came a month after the agency estimated that the outbreak would cause 10 million infections on the continent within six months.
The same report from Friday predicts that between 29 million and 44 million people could be infected in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic if containment measures on the continent fail.
Several analysts emphasize that the impact of the pandemic will really depend on the actions that governments take.
The director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Stephen Karingi, told the British newspaper The Guardian that it is necessary to recognize that African authorities are “doing a lot” to contain the outbreak.
“Projections were that we would now be in a war situation, but due to measures taken by governments and communities, transmission rates are lower than those we have seen elsewhere.”
Soy says movement restrictions have slowed the spread of the virus, but officials must remain vigilant, especially in Africa’s slums.
“They have a high population density and very poor health services. Some of them don’t even have access to water,” says the journalist.
Soy points out that the majority of its inhabitants would have trouble staying confined for a long time, because they are informal workers who cannot eat if they do not go out to work.
Despite the diversity of opinions and debates about why Africa has resisted the covid-19 pandemic better than other resource-rich regions, the vast majority of experts agree that it is too early to speak of an “African exception”.
Source:
https://www.time24.news/t24/2020/05...esistance-to-the-pandemic-epoca-negocios.html
I think it is mostly due to a lack of proper testing. The native Africans are far worse off than African-Americans on every level (access to food, clean water, healthcare, etc.). Yet we see a disproportionate impact on African-American communities, when you adjust for the relative size of their population. Often societal factors are cited as the reason. This is surely even worse in Africa.