Covid-19 variants are spreading across Africa with the rise of the third wave and variants have been reported in about 50% of member states, said Africa CDC director Dr John Nkengasong on Thursday at his weekly briefing.
By Thursday, more than five million cases of Covid-19 had been reported in Africa and more than 136,000 deaths, as the continent gets hit by the third wave.
“The peak of wave three is normally higher than the peak of wave two — and is normally more severe than wave two in pandemics,” he warned, noting that Tunisia was experiencing its fourth wave.
SA is among eight countries with a higher test positivity rate than the continent’s overall rate of 10.1% for Covid-19. The others are Angola, the DRC, Egypt, Namibia, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
SA is also one of the six countries reporting the highest average number of new Covid-19 cases per million population a day, at 121 per million.
The Seychelles, which has a tiny population, is the outlier with 1,354 new cases per million, followed by Namibia (365) and Botswana (201), which also have small populations. Next in line are Tunisia (163) and Cape Verde (123).
Overall, there has been a 22% average increase in new cases reported in Africa during the past month to June 13. The breakdown shows:
- 122% increase in the Central region
- 34% increase in the Southern region
- 13% increase in the Eastern region
- 10% increase in the Northern region
- 3% decrease in the Western region
The death rate in the past month declined overall by 7% on average, but the past week marks a shift — with a 19% increase in new deaths from the previous week.
“This virus is difficult to suppress,” said Nkengasong. “Once countries start easing lockdown measures, such as the movement of people, the virus comes up.”
Unless we vaccinate at speed and at scale, we will see variants emerge.
— Africa CDC director, Dr John Nkengasong
On variants, he said that 55% of countries (30) are now reporting the Alpha variant, originally reported in the UK; 53% (29) are now reporting the Beta variant, originally reported in SA; and 24% (13), are now reporting the Delta variant, first reported in India.
“If you recall, few countries were reporting the Alpha and Beta variants ... unless we vaccinate at speed and at scale, we will see variants emerge and we don’t know the challenge they pose to the deployment of vaccines.”
By June 14, 59.9 million vaccines had been procured by 51 countries and 42.1 million doses had been delivered to people. This means 70% of the available doses have gone into arms.
But only 0.79% of the population has been fully covered by inoculations on the continent.
Four countries, notably Tanzania, have not yet given a single shot, a problem which Nkengasong attributes to “leadership challenges”.
“If we were able to vaccinate at speed and at scale then of course the waves would go away. It is as simple as that,” said Nkengasong, welcoming the G7 promise to donate at least a billion vaccines to Africa.
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