Last week, Africa recorded 12% more new cases with the novel coronavirus and 15% fewer deaths, the Africa CDC chief announced today and warned that the continent must prepare for “a second wave ‘of the disease.
According to the director of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the African Union (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, during the institution’s weekly press conference, the 55 countries that make up the organization recorded between 1,400 and October 27 nearly 1,400 deaths (1,393), resulting in a reduction in the rate of spread of the disease by 15%, and the number of new infections was 74,595, for a total of 1,715,130, 12% more than the previous week or 3.9% of the world total.
“Now is the time to prepare for a second wave,” said John Nkengasong.
“The continent has been very successful in reversing the trend, with most of the peaks around July and then a steady decline, but now we’re starting to see some stagnation,” he warned.
Nkengasong stressed that all countries should strengthen testing and monitoring systems and recommend the use of masks.
“If we do this together, we are actually preparing the continent for a second wave, which will undoubtedly come,” he said.
“We see what is happening in Europe. We want to make sure we preserve what we have achieved over the past 10 months, ”he added.
During the period under review, the continent recorded more than 1.4 million healings, or 82% of the total cases of infection reported in Africa; and over 41,000 deaths (41,203), indicating a death rate of 2.4%.
A group of 13 countries reported death rates above the global ratio (2.7%): the Sahrawi Arab Republic (7.1%), Chad (6.7%), Sudan (6.1%) , Liberia (5.8%), Egypt (5.8%), Niger (5.7%), Mali (3.8%), Algeria (3.4%), Gambia (3.3%), Sierra Leone (3.2%), Malawi (3.1%), Zimbabwe (2.9%) and Angola (2.8%).
The North Africa region recorded the newest cases of contagion during the week under review (55%), followed by Southern Africa (25%), East Africa (16 %), West Africa (3%), and Central Africa (1%).
The set of countries with the highest incidence of contagion cases (covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants) includes Libya (110), Cape Verde (107), Morocco (57), Tunisia (49 ), Botswana (26), South Africa (21) and Namibia (14).
Six countries are the scene of new cases of contagion in the week of October 20 to 27, led by Morocco (31%), South Africa (18%), Libya (11%), Tunisia (9% ), Kenya (7%) and Ethiopia (6%).
The number of tests carried out on the continent stands at more than 17 million and the rate of positive results is in the order of 10.4%, which represents an increase of 6.9% compared to the previous week.
Africa’s death toll from covid-19 has been in the last 24 hours of 360, now totaling 42,151, while infections have increased to 1,748,335, up 11,836, according to official data. Africa CDC recorded 7,216 recovered from the organization’s 55 member states, for a total of 1,430,558.
The first case of covid-19 in Africa appeared in Egypt on February 14, and Nigeria was the first. sub-Saharan African country to report cases of infection on Feb.28.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.1 million deaths and more than 44 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report from the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
