A 43% jump in reported COVID-19 cases was registered in Africa last week. This explained a warning from the World Health Organisation that Africa could become the next epicenter of the pandemic.
According to John Nkengasong, the Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who disclosed this in his weekly briefing in Cape Town, on Thursday said Africa has a “very, very limited” and “very, very strained” testing capacity.
Medical experts have said that the coronavirus infection is under-reported and higher in reality in the continent.
The WHO had earlier painted a gloomy picture of one of the last continents to be hit by the pandemic. According to WHO, over 300,000 people could be killed by the pandemic and pushed 30 million people into desperate poverty.
According to Nkengasong, there is still time for Africa to avert such a disaster. However, it is very critical to test people and trace virus cases.
He said that “It all depends on what we are discussing here, which is, are you testing? Are you finding the cases? Are you isolating and tracking the contacts?”, adding that the WHO report “is not a prediction that means it must happen.”
To Nkengasong, Africa is still struggling on the testing front.
He said since the two months that the continent started mobilizing in fighting the pandemic, the tests conducted were less than 500,000 in a more than one billion people. Meaning that just 325 people were tested per one million people in the continent. This is far lower than Italy, one of the worst-hit countries in the world.
“If you don’t test, you don’t find. And if you don’t test, you are blinded. If you don’t test, you are not ahead of the curve,” Nkengasong said.
According to the ACDCP, nearly 26,000 cases were reported on Thursday by African governments, which was just about 16,000 a week ago. About 1,200 people have been killed.
In the global picture, Africa has a relatively small figure but the sharp increase in cases called for serious concern. There was a 29% increase in the previous week.
Nkengasong also added that the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is targeting to conduct one million tests in African in the next four weeks and the next four months, it has the target of conducting ten million tests in the continent.
However, the sole challenge that is hindering the overall efforts is the existing fragile health system in many African countries.
*Bada Yusuf Amoo is a Staff Writer for The West African Pilot News
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