Coronavirus: Africa faces the pandemic on Thursday May 28

A health worker disinfects a classroom in an elementary school in Ivory Park in South Africa on May 28, 2020. REUTERS / Siphiwe Sibeko

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According to the CDC, the African Union Center for Disease Prevention, the continent recorded 124,482 cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, and 3,696 deaths from the disease. South Africa and Egypt are still the two plays most affected by the pandemic.

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  • Malagasy President's Covid Organics begins clinical trials

In Madagascar, the President of the Malagasy Republic announced the start of clinical trials of an injectable solution "  based on artemisia  " to treat people with Covid-19. Tests carried out in hospitals in the port city as well as in those of the capital, "  with the approval of the Malagasy scientific committee and the World Health Organization  ". This announcement, widely reported in the media, was however tempered and contradicted on Wednesday by the presidency itself. For its part, WHO denies any validation.

  • The Central African Republic generalizes the wearing of masks

The Central African government took several measures to fight the new coronavirus during a meeting of the Covid-19 technical committee. On his Facebook page, Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada, announced that "  given the persistence of irresponsible behavior observed since and likely to worsen the spread of the disease  ", sanctions would be imposed. These provide for prison terms ranging from 1 to 3 months.

In addition, this technical committee has decided to generalize the wearing of masks from next week on public transport, in "  closed places  " and with the defense and security forces. The Ministry of Health stresses that ten million masks would be distributed throughout this country of five million inhabitants. For the moment, CAR, where health infrastructures are almost nonexistent, is resisting the pandemic rather well with 702 detected cases and only one deceased person.

  • Anti-Bill Gates conspiracy theses resound powerfully in Africa

Profits, population control ... The accusations against the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, very active in research on diseases and vaccines on the continent, are not new. But the pandemic, which killed more than 352,000 people worldwide as of May 27, has offered them a new sounding board, as shown in the singular case of a publication in Kenya . On March 15, Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko released a video of Bill Gates with the comment: "  Bill Gates told us about the 2015 corona virus  " (sic).

We saw the founder of Microsoft warning that the world was not prepared to face a global epidemic. In this sequence taken from a TED Talks conference five years ago, no mention of the coronavirus or Covid-19. This publication, however, experienced record virality. With more than a million shares and over 38 million views, it became the most prolific Bill Gates post during the pandemic, according to the CrowdTangle social media analysis tool.

With the appearance of the virus in December in Wuhan, China and its spread across the globe, conspiracy rumors linking Bill Gates to the pandemic have spread. These conspiracy theories lend him the will to control populations through the implantation of subcutaneous fleas or digital tattoos, and to draw immense financial profits from a possible vaccine, or claim that his foundation has patented a treatment several years ago before spreading the new coronavirus. For others, Bill Gates created the virus with the aim of reducing the world population, a very popular assertion on African social networks.

  • In South Africa, " the response to the coronavirus is disproportionate "

The deconfinement started in several African countries after many weeks of more or less harsh confinement. The time has come for the first assessment. In South Africa, for example, President Cyril Ramaphosa has just announced easing measures such as the lifting of the curfew and the reopening of certain businesses which will be effective on June 1. South Africa is the African country most affected by the pandemic. It is also the first African state to have imposed total national containment on March 27. A confinement criticized on our antenna Koffi M. Kouakou, analyst on African affairs based in Pretoria, this Thursday morning.

►Also listen: South Africa: “the response to the coronavirus is disproportionate”

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  • Coronavirus
  • Africa
  • Health and Medicine