• With just under 8 million contaminations recorded since the start of the pandemic, sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been relatively unaffected by the coronavirus.

  • However, the continent had to deal with the virus with fairly limited screening and vaccination capacities, and the official figures would thus have been largely underestimated.

  • However, the WHO is counting on an early exit from the pandemic on the continent.

It was perhaps the continent that aroused the most fears at the start of the pandemic.

Reduced screening and sequencing capacities, restricted access to anti-Covid vaccines… How has Africa faced the coronavirus pandemic with a limited sanitary arsenal?

According to official figures, the dreaded tidal wave and carnage did – fortunately – not occur.

How to explain it?

Are the figures listed really representative?

20 Minutes

takes stock.

Low figures, but unreliable indicators

On paper, Africa is to date the continent least affected by the pandemic.

Of the nearly 494 million contaminations and more than 6.1 million deaths officially recorded on the planet, sub-Saharan Africa has just under 8 million cases and less than 165,000 deaths, according to the latest figures from the Epicenter epidemiological center, attached to the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Figures which, for more than half of the cases, relate to South Africa alone, to date the country of the continent having paid the heaviest price.

The state, which has a population of 59 million, has recorded more than 3.7 million people infected with the coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 South Africans, according to figures from the National Institute of Diseases. transmissible.

Its researchers estimate, however, that the actual number of victims could be three times higher.

Data from the South African Medical Research Council shows that more than 300,000 additional natural deaths have occurred since the start of the pandemic.

On the other hand, for the rest of the continent, the figures are so low that they raise questions.

Like Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with 215 million inhabitants, which has officially recorded only barely 260,000 cases, including 3,142 deaths, in two years.

Wide asymptomatic circulation

Figures so low that they suggest that they were probably underestimated.

So, in an attempt to have a more accurate representation of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, the epidemiological center Epicenter conducted seroprevalence surveys in six countries – Cameroon, Kenya, Mali, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC) and Sudan – to assess the proportion of the population that has already been in contact with the virus.

And the results, made public in December 2021, show that the Covid-19 has in fact circulated very widely on the continent.

The researchers have thus discovered that, since the start of the pandemic, in Mali, nearly a quarter of the population has contracted the coronavirus, when official figures show 0.07% of people tested positive.

In Niger, while official data show 0.02% of the population infected, it is actually 42% of Nigeriens who have been in contact with Covid-19.

Ditto in Sudan, with nearly 34% of the population infected, against 0.08% according to official figures.

How to explain this discrepancy?

By “a history of low utilization of health services in Africa, which raises fears of under-reporting of cases, low availability of objectively verifiable data on the epidemic in Africa, where mortality remains unknown, and low access to tests diagnoses," summarized Salha Issoufou, MSF's director of medical operations for West and Central Africa, during the webinar on the presentation of the results of these seroprevalence surveys.

But also by a low noise circulation of the virus, within a young population which was able to contract the Covid-19 without developing the slightest symptom.

“The percentage of asymptomatic people is much higher in Africa.

They do not feel the need to go get tested,” said Yap Boum, the representative of Epicenter Africa.

On the continent, “the virus circulated significantly” but generated “fewer serious forms than elsewhere”.

The pandemic under control on the continent in 2022

Despite these patchy data, the WHO is optimistic about the future, counting on control of the pandemic in Africa by 2022. In many countries on the continent, contamination is on the decline, allowing, like France in mid-March, a lifting of the last restrictions.

Example with Equatorial Guinea, in Central Africa, which on March 22 lifted a curfew imposed on the population for thirteen months.

On Monday, South Africa, through its President, Cyril Ramaphosa, in turn announced the lifting of all restrictions, stressing that it was time to revive growth, while the rate of new infections and deaths has decreased significantly since mid-February.

According to the leader, the death rate fell from a daily average of 420 in July 2021 to just 12 last week.

The next day, it was the Nigerian government that lifted most of its restrictions, including a night curfew and gathering restrictions, imposed at the start of the epidemic.

"The response to Covid-19 has been reviewed, said the presidency, taking into account the reduction in the number of cases and the risk of new variants arriving in the territory, as well as the availability of vaccines" in the country.

For the time being, Africa remains the world's red lantern in terms of vaccination.

“Even if it is lagging behind, with only 11% of its adult population fully immunized, we now have a regular supply of doses,” tempered Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, in mid-February. .

For Yap Boum, more than vaccinating the entire population, the priority must be to adapt the vaccination strategy to the realities on the ground.

With a majority of cases in young people who have developed forms with few or no symptoms, "we can wonder about the need to administer vaccines in a uniform manner, the reason for which is above all to avoid the most severe pathologies, a- he told the

World

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Vaccines are essential for those most at risk, i.e. the elderly or people with comorbidity factors”.

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  • Health

  • Coronavirus

  • epidemic

  • Covid-19

  • Africa

  • Covid vaccine