Coronavirus: how is the increase in contamination in Côte d'Ivoire explained?

In a Covid-19 screening center in Abidjan, a woman waits for her turn to be tested, on April 15, 2020. REUTERS / Luc Gnago

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If the official fatality rate, less than 2%, and the number of deaths, 31, remain fairly low to date in Côte d'Ivoire, the number of reported cases of Covid-19 is increasing more and more rapidly. In the past four days, 273 cases have been recorded in the country, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 2750: a rate of growth never before known.

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With our correspondent in Abidjan, François Hume-Ferkatadji

Advisor to the Minister of Health, Doctor Edith Kouassi has made several hypotheses to explain the increase in the number of cases. First, non-compliance with barrier measures, but also, according to her, strengthening the capacity of the number of tests, which would automatically lead to an increase in the number of cases:

“ The government has improved screening capacities, in addition to the rapid intervention teams that were already there, 113 in number in Côte d'Ivoire. We have nine large capacity proximity screening sites. "

An assumption that seems unlikely, because official figures show that the number of daily withdrawals has not increased, on the contrary. While Côte d'Ivoire made up to 1,000 tests a day in mid-May, there were between 400 and 700 samples last week.

According to Commissioner Bleu Charlemagne, it is above all the lack of discipline that is to be questioned. “  It reflects the indiscipline on the ground. There is nothing else. So I would like to say, sincerely, to each of us, to be the guardian of ourselves.  "

As for the use of the controversial treatment deemed ineffective by several scientific journals, hydroxichloroquine + azythromicine, the Ministry of Health says that it is still part of " the therapeutic arsenal ".

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  • Ivory Coast
  • Coronavirus

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