Experts are perplexed that Africa is avoiding a catastrophic scenario after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency last year, the Turkish Daily Sabah writes, citing the Associated Press.
Here is what eyewitnesses say: “This week, in a busy market in a poor town near Harare, Nyasha Ndu kept his mask in his pocket while hundreds of other people, mostly without masks, pushed around buying and selling fruits and vegetables on display. on wooden tables and plastic sheets. As in much of Zimbabwe, the coronavirus is quickly fading away, and political rallies, concerts and home gatherings are back.
“COVID-19 is gone, when was the last time you heard of anyone who died from COVID-19?” – says Ndu. “The mask is designed to protect my pocket,” he said. “The police are demanding bribes, so I lose money if I don’t wear a mask.”
Earlier this week, Zimbabwe reported just 33 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths, according to AP, in line with the continent’s recent decline in incidence, where World Health Organization (WHO) data show infections have been declining since July.
When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared a pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. While it is still unclear what the ultimate casualties of COVID-19 will be, this catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in either Zimbabwe or much of the continent.
Doctors are happy about the respite from COVID-19, but fear it is only temporary. “People need to remain very vigilant,” warned Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Zimbabwe Association of Private Practitioners and Dentists. He fears that another wave of coronavirus may soon hit Zimbabwe. “Complacency is what will destroy us because we can be taken by surprise.”
Scientists emphasize that it is extremely difficult to obtain accurate data on COVID-19, especially in African countries with patchy surveillance, and warn that declining trends in coronavirus can easily be reversed.
But something “mysterious” is going on in Africa that has baffled scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, head of the Department of Global Health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and resources to fight COVID-19 that Europe and the United States do, but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.
In Africa, less than 6% of people are vaccinated. For several months, WHO in its weekly pandemic reports described the continent as “one of the least affected” by the coronavirus in the world.
Some researchers say the continent’s younger population – an average age of 20 compared to around 43 in Western Europe – in addition to slower urbanization and a tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared Africa’s more deadly effects of the virus so far. since. Several studies are investigating whether there could be other explanations, including genetic causes or susceptibility to other diseases.
Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Infectious Disease Genomics at the University of Redimer in Nigeria, believes the authorities are used to containing outbreaks even without vaccines, and expressed appreciation for the wide network of local health workers. “It’s not always about how much money you have or how advanced your hospitals are,” he said.
Devi Sridhar, head of the Department of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, believes African leaders have not received adequate recognition for their swift action, citing Mali’s decision to close its borders even before COVID-19 emerged. “I think there is a different cultural approach in Africa where these countries have approached COVID with a sense of humility because they have experienced things like Ebola, polio and malaria,” says Sridhar.
In recent months, the coronavirus has hit South Africa and is estimated to have killed more than 89,000 people there, the largest number of deaths on the continent to date. But so far, the authorities, while acknowledging that there may be gaps, have not reported the sheer number of unexpected deaths that could be attributed to COVID. WHO data show that deaths in Africa account for only 3% of the global total. By comparison, deaths in the Americas and Europe account for 46% and 29% of global deaths.
In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, the government has so far recorded about 3,000 deaths from a population of 200 million. In the United States, this number of deaths is recorded every two to three days. The low numbers are giving relief to Nigerians like Opemipo Are, a 23-year-old resident of Abuja. “They said that there would be corpses on the streets and all that, but nothing of the kind happened,” she was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. Recently, the Nigerian authorities launched a campaign to significantly increase immunization against coronavirus in this West African country. Officials intend to vaccinate half of the population by February, and this, in their opinion, will help them achieve herd immunity.
Oyewale Tomori, a virologist from Nigeria and member of several WHO advisory groups, suggested that Africa may not even need as many vaccines as the West. The idea, while controversial, is being seriously debated among African scientists – and reminiscent of a proposal made by British officials last March to allow COVID-19 to freely infect populations to bolster immunity, he said.
However, this does not mean that vaccines are not needed in Africa. “We need to get a full vaccine to prepare for the next wave,” says Salim Abdul Karim, an epidemiologist at the University of South Africa KwaZulu-Natal who previously advised the South African government on COVID-19. “Seeing what is happening in Europe, the likelihood that new cases will spill over here is very high.”
The impact of the coronavirus, AP notes, has also been relatively minor in poor countries like Afghanistan, where experts predicted outbreaks amid ongoing conflict that could prove disastrous. Hashmat Arifi, a 23-year-old student from Kabul, said he had not seen anyone wearing a mask for several months, including at a recent wedding he attended with hundreds of guests. In his university classrooms, dozens of students usually sit without masks in cramped quarters. “I haven’t seen any cases of corona lately,” says Arifi. To date, Afghanistan has recorded some 7,200 deaths among 39 million people, although few tests were carried out during the armed conflict and the actual number of cases and deaths is unknown.
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