US News Covid-19 in Africa: the second wave is deadlier

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Since the start of the pandemic, Africa has officially remained one of the least affected continents, with 3.3 million of Covid-19 cases and almost 82,000 deaths, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). But the rise in the death rate of the second wave marks a departure from the first and could be a game-changer.

The death rate from the new coronavirus in Africa now stands at 2.5% of recorded cases, for a global average of 2.2%. At the same time, the number of cases on the continent has increased by 14% per week over the past month. "We are witnessing a turnaround," notes John Nkengasong, director of this specialized agency of the African Union.

Covid-19: China confines five million additional inhabitants

© STR Health workers scan samples of Covid-19 tests during a massive screening campaign on January 12, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, China China decided on Tuesday to confine as a precaution five million inhabitants of a city bordering Beijing after a case of coronavirus, the authorities trying to quickly contain small outbreaks that appeared near the capital. The country has largely contained the Covid-19 on its soil, with zero deaths since May.

Covid -related deaths in South Africa have increased by 19 % in the four weeks up to 6 December, leading the government to introduce new Africa CDC's John Nkengasong says that "clearly, the second wave is here." According to him, there have been three main trajectories in African countries

The COVID - 19 pandemic in South Africa is part of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 ( COVID - 19 ) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Certain African countries are more severely affected by this second wave, 21 registering mortality rates higher than the world average. In Sudan, this rate climbs to 6.2%, in Egypt to 5.5%, in Liberia to 4.4%…

Overloaded infrastructures

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the health systems in these countries are congested. "The dynamics of the epidemic are beyond the capacity of nurses and doctors to take care of patients," said John Nkengasong.

Video: Vaccine, a campaign under tension (BFMTV)

These countries also suffer in particular in their infrastructures, in particular from a lack of oxygen used to treat severe forms of Covid-19. In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, health authorities have recognized that they are obliged to "choose which patients to take care of and which to refuse treatment".

Coronavirus: Some 270 million vaccines obtained for Africa by the African Union

For scientists, the goal must be to immunize at least 60% of the population of the continent in order to hope to slow the spread of the coronavirus © Nardus Engelbrecht / AP / SIPA A center to test for Covid-19, in Cape Town, South Africa on January 8, 2021.

The Africa CDC has also established the Africa COVID - 19 Response Fund, in collaboration with the public-private AfroChampions initiative, to raise an initial Minimal capacities for testing and reporting cases may mean that official numbers do not provide a full picture of the COVID - 19 caseload in Africa .

New variant of COVID - 19 in South Africa 04:35. Because in South African summer, we are not expecting a surge and a big second wave to start in the summer. And then when we surveyed that , we saw that this lineage seemed to be displacing the other ones, but also spreading very fast across the

The AU announced last week that it had ordered 270 million vaccines for the continent in addition to those planned through the Covax device, an initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) and private partners for equitable access to vaccines. Negotiations are "underway" with Russia and China to order additional doses. “We don't have an agreement at the moment,” noted John Nkengasong.

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A few days ago, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), had launched an appeal, believing that the world was on the verge of a " catastrophic moral failure ”due to uneven policies on Covid vaccines.

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According to the head of the WHO, while the first vaccines are starting to be deployed, the promise that access will be equitable is seriously compromised. As if to illustrate this "catastrophic moral" setback, Dr Tedros claimed that 39 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine had already been administered in at least 49 wealthy countries.

At the same time, "only 25 doses were administered in one of the countries with the lowest income", he lamented. "Not 25 million, not 25,000, just 25," he insisted, without indicating which country it is.