By Spy Uganda
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has reached 7,182,710, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.
The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the African Union, said the death toll from the pandemic stands at 181,098 while 6,259,666 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease.
South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia are the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the Africa CDC.
South Africa battling the fourth wave has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa with 2,568,511 cases, while the northern African country Morocco reported 731,084 cases as of yesterday, it was noted.
Other 33 countries are battling the third wave, which means they are encountering significantly higher cases than those of the first and the second waves. “This points to how things will continue to unfold,” warned Africa CDC director Dr John Nkengasong during a weekly Covid-19 briefing on Thursday.
He said with the Delta variant and others have ravaged the continent and asked African states to prepare themselves to achieve a vaccination target of 30 percent by the end of this year.
“What we need to remember is that the ancestral virus that the first person caught last year had a reproductive ratio capacity of only 2.5, which means one person infected was able to spread it to two and a half more people, but now the delta variant has a reproductive value—which we call the arrow north of about six to eight — which means that one person infected can spread it to six or to eight more people. So we need to factor that into where we need to be to achieve our herd immunity.”
The Delta variant has spread in 30 countries. Over the past one week, between August 2 and 8, Africa recorded 270,000 new cases representing a 1 percent decrease from the previous week. A total of 6,300 new deaths have been reported across the continent last week and this represents a 1 percent decrease in the total number of deaths.
But between July 12 and August 8, there has been a one percent average decrease in new cases over the continent. Across regions, there was a 31 percent increase in West Africa, 11 percent increase in North Africa, 8 percent increase in East Africa, 10 percent decrease in southern Africa and two percent, decrease in Central Africa.
