Why Africa has few virus cases

EXPERTS WONDER: ‘CONTINENT SEEMS TO BE UNSCATHED’

The coronavirus is spreading fast beyond its China birthplace but sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions, has so far been almost spared – and experts want to know why.

More than 2 760 people worldwide have died of Covid-19 and almost 81 000 are infected in over 45 countries.

Most of these have been in China, but cases are now rising fast in parts of Europe and the Middle East, while the first infection in Latin America was recorded on Wednesday, in Brazil.

But across all of Africa, just a few cases have surfaced – a tally that has health specialists scratching their heads, given the continent’s close economic ties with China.

“This is the question that everyone is asking, especially as other regions such as South America or Eastern Europe now have cases,” said Amadou Alpha Sall, head of the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, the Senegalese capital.

“The current figures could be the reality, it’s hard to know. Maybe it’s because Africa is not that connected.”

Thumbi Ndung’u, director of a Durban-based infectious disease research centre, Santhe, said “I don’t think anybody knows” why Africa so far appeared to be unscathed. He also speculated that it could be “there isn’t much travel to that particular part of China from Africa – back and forth”.

Michel Yao, an emergency response expert at World Health Organisation Africa, based in the Congolese capital Brazzaville, said these scenarios were most unlikely. To detect and hide cases would require an “exceptionally managed” response, he said.

And undetected cases would result in an outbreak that would be “surely detected, because it spreads faster”, Yao said.

Could Africa’s predominantly hot climate ward off or even kill the virus?

“There is no current evidence to indicate that climate affects transmission,” said Rodney Adam, who heads the infection control task force at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi.

If the continent can count itself lucky so far, experts say it is just a question of time.

“We think Africa is going to be affected,” said Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of infectious diseases department at Paris’s Bichat hospital.

On the plus said, the apparent delay has given African countries precious weeks in which to prepare. – AFP

Maybe it’s because Africa is not that connected