Covid: Africa remains less affected despite increased circulation of the virus

The Covid-19 hits harder an Africa so far relatively unspoiled. The flow of deaths caused by the pandemic has jumped to around 900 a day now, or 30% more than at the beginning of the year, bringing the total to 79,000 deaths against 63,000 at the end of December. And there are now officially 3.3 million people infected in total on the continent, 700,000 more than three weeks ago, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Flows twice as high as those observed during the peak last summer, recently underlined John Nkengasong, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the specialized agency of the African Union. Who puts this outbreak on the account of a ” loosening of social distancing due to weariness ».

Governments are concerned

Something to worry about the authorities, who have increased in recent days the calls to respect barrier gestures, or have tightened the restrictions. Senegal has extended by eight days the curfew which was due to expire last Monday. And Malawi has for the first time instituted a curfew and the compulsory wearing of masks. The African Union has announced that it has obtained 270 million doses of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, available in February-March. They will be added to those delivered by the Covax campaign of international solidarity supervised by the UN.

Reasons for optimism

However, the situation remains less alarming than in the West, where the lethality is the highest. Most of the epidemic resurgence, which actually dates back to early December, is concentrated on a few countries for the moment: South Africa, which has accounted for 40% of cases and deaths on the continent for a year, Zambia and Nigeria. The continent’s demographic giant, with its 180 million inhabitants, has certainly seen the flow of infections double since the beginning of January, but the incidence there remains relatively low, with 1,500 cases and ten deaths per day.

The flow of infections has also started to fall for two weeks in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, the countries most affected since the spring behind South Africa. Even in this country, the Minister of Health, Zweli Mkhize, estimated Tuesday that the peak had passed, with a 23% drop in the daily flow for a week.

In other countries, especially Ethiopia, the second most populous country on the continent, the flow of infection and death remains very low in proportion to the population. Twenty-five times more populated than France, Africa has recorded a number of deaths hardly higher. Only one African country, South Africa, is among the fifty worst affected in the world by Covid as a percentage of their population.

Another slight glimmer of hope, the South African variant would certainly be 1.5 times more contagious than other strains around the world, according to a medical study released Monday evening, but not more lethal.

African assets

Africa also retains strengths in the face of Covid-19, which explains why, despite the fragility of its health infrastructure, the continent has not been overwhelmed so far: a population of less than twenty years on average, of which only 3 % is over 65, the age from which Covid-19 is really dangerous; and early awareness of the danger, unlike in Europe, due to previous epidemics, such as Ebola.

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