Aggressive and bold action needed to save Africa
The African Union (AU) body dealing with the coronavirus says, “Aggressive and bold” action is needed as Africa’s coronavirus cases pass the one million mark.
By Karen Mhlanga
Patrick Youssef, the regional director for Africa of the International Committee of the Red Cross said, “It took African nearly five months to hit 500,000 covid-19 cases but about a month to double that number.”
“If measures against the virus are not followed, we fear that health care systems already weakened by conflict and violence could be overwhelmed by covid-19,” he said.
It says that South Africa being the place where the most testing is being done accounts for more than half of all the cases in the continent.
South Africa today has 538 000 confirmed cases, 387 000 recoveries and 9,604 deaths.
Tanzania’s lack of data has been noted as a high concern for the AU.Experts also think that a lack of comprehensive testing across Africa means the true extent of the pandemic is not known.
Tanzanian health minister is said to have said their coronavirus was “heading towards an end” and it has not published figures for weeks.
“We continue to reach out to Tanzania but we’re not having the right responses,” director of the AU’s centres for Disease and Control (Africa CDC), Dr John Nkengasong, told BBC.
More than 500,000 cases of covid- 19 have already been confirmed in South Africa alone. The country has good data and compared with most of Africa- a huge testing operation under way.
So, is it possible that there are only another half million cases across rest of the entire continent?
The short answer is no.
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