This week in a busy market in a poor settlement outside Harare, Nyasha Ndou carried her mask in her pocket as hundreds of others, mostly masked, went to buy and sell fruits and vegetables displayed on wooden tables and plastic sheets. were worried about. Like much of Zimbabwe, the coronavirus here is quickly being taken back into the past, as political rallies, concerts and domestic celebrations return.
“Covid-19 is gone, when was the last time you heard about someone who died of COVID-19?” Nadou said. “The mask is there to protect my pocket,” he said. “The police ask for bribes so if I don’t walk around with a mask on, I get paid.” Earlier this week, Zimbabwe reported only 33 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths, in line with a recent decline in the disease across the continent, where World Health Organization figures show infections have been declining since July.
When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would spread across Africa, killing millions. While it is still unclear what the ultimate toll of COVID-19 will be, that dire scenario in Zimbabwe or much of the continent has yet to materialize.
Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data is extremely difficult, especially in African countries with weak surveillance, and warn that declining coronavirus trends can easily be reversed.
But something “mysterious” is going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafa al-Sadr, president of global health at Columbia University. “Africa does not have the vaccines and resources to fight COVID-19 as in Europe and America, but somehow they are doing better,” she said.
Why Africa may be better than the West
Less than 6 percent of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO in its weekly pandemic report has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world”.
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Some researchers say the continent’s younger population – the average age in Western Europe is around 20 versus 20 – may have spared the virus’s far more deadly effects, in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and propensity to spend time outside. Be. Several studies are investigating whether there may be other explanations, including genetic causes or previous infections with parasitic diseases.
On Friday, researchers working in Uganda said they found that Covid-19 patients with higher rates of exposure to malaria were less likely to have severe illness or death than those with a shorter history of the disease.
“We went into this project thinking that we would see higher rates of negative outcomes in people with a history of malaria infection because that’s what was seen in patients co-infected with malaria and Ebola,” said Jane Achan, a senior research consultant. Malaria Consortium and study co-authors. “We were actually quite surprised to see the opposite – that malaria might have a protective effect.”
Achan said this may suggest that previous infections with malaria may have “blunt” the tendency of people’s immune systems to respond when they are infected with COVID-19. The research was presented Friday at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Christian Happy, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer University in Nigeria, said officials are used to preventing outbreaks even without vaccines and credited an extensive network of community health workers.
“It’s not always about how much money you have or how sophisticated your hospitals are,” he said.
Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said African leaders have not received the credit they deserve by acting quickly, citing Mali’s decision to close its borders before the arrival of COVID-19. Happened.
“I think there’s a different cultural outlook in Africa, where these countries have approached COVID with a sense of humility because they’ve experienced things like Ebola, polio and malaria,” Sridhar said.
In the past months, the coronavirus has overtaken South Africa and is estimated to have killed more than 89,000 in the continent’s highest-ever death toll. But for now, African officials, acknowledging that there may be gaps, are not reporting a large number of unexpected deaths that could be related to COVID. WHO figures show that the number of deaths in Africa is only 3 percent of the global total. In comparison, the share of deaths in America and Europe is 46 percent and 29 percent.
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In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the government has recorded nearly 3,000 deaths among its 200 million population so far. The US records that many deaths occur every two or three days.
A small number of Nigerians like 23-year-old Opemipo Are in Abuja are feeling relieved. “They said there would be dead bodies on the streets and all that, but nothing like that happened,” she said.
Does Africa need vaccines?
On Friday, Nigerian officials launched a campaign to expand the West African nation’s coronavirus vaccinations. Officials are aiming to vaccinate half the population before February, a goal they think will help them achieve herd immunity.
Owale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist who sits on several WHO advisory groups, suggested that Africa may not need as many vaccines as the West. It’s an idea, while controversial, he says is being discussed seriously among African scientists – and British officials proposed last March to independently infect populations to become immune to Covid-19. Reminisced.
However, this does not mean that vaccines are not needed in Africa.
“We need to vaccinate everyone to prepare for the next wave,” said Salim Abdul Karim, an epidemiologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa who previously advised the South African government on COVID-19. “Given what is happening in Europe, the potential for more cases to spread here is very high.”
The impact of the coronavirus beyond Africa has also been relatively small in poor countries such as Afghanistan, where experts predicted the outbreak would prove disastrous amid the ongoing conflict.
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Hashmat Arifi, a 23-year-old student in Kabul, said he hadn’t seen anyone wearing a mask in months, including a recent wedding he attended with hundreds of guests. In his university classrooms, more than 20 students regularly sit almost without masks.
Arifi said, “I haven’t seen any cases of corona recently.” So far, Afghanistan has recorded nearly 7,200 deaths among its 39 million people, although little testing was done amid the conflict and the actual number of cases and deaths is unknown.
‘temporary relief’
Back in Zimbabwe, doctors were grateful for the relief from Covid-19 – but they feared it was only temporary.
“People should be very cautious,” warned Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Zimbabwe Association of Medical and Dental Private Practitioners. They fear another coronavirus wave could hit Zimbabwe next month. “Satisfaction is what will destroy us because we can be caught unaware.”