Quarter of a billion Africans at risk, as virus toll tops 300,000
WASHINGTON AFP M AY15, 2020- The coronavirus could infect a quarter of a billion Africans and put intolerable pressure on the continent’s fragile health system, a new report said Friday, as the pandemic’s global death toll topped 300,000.
Despite fears of a second wave of infections, borders began opening up in Europe and lockdowns continued to ease as governments try to get stalled economies moving again, with experts warning world output could shrink by 10 percent.
But it was the very human cost of the disease that was thrown into sharp relief with the discovery of infections in the world’s biggest refugee camp, where upwards of a million Rohingya live in squalor.
“We are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19” in these camps, Save The Children’s Bangladesh health director Shamim Jahan said.
“There are no intensive care beds at this moment” in the camps at Cox’s Bazaar, Jahan said.
Track and trace teams were fanning out Friday to follow up on two positive tests.
Epidemiologists have long warned that the virus could race through the cramped, sewage-soaked alleys of the camps, where the persecuted Muslim minority have lived since fleeing a military offensive in neighboring Myanmar nearly three years ago.
The nexus of poverty and risk was also laid bare by a World Health Organization report that warned Africa is a hotspot waiting to happen, despite so far having escaped the worst of the disease.