Africa, poorly equipped and without vaccines, struggles with deadly Covid-19 boom

A new, more transmissible strain of the disease, first detected in South Africa, causes infections in neighboring countries and has been found thousands of kilometers away in countries such as Ghana. The global death toll exceeded the world average for the first time in January. From Senegal to Zambia, daily falls have been about twice as high as the previous peak.

“The second wave is here with revenge and our systems are overwhelmed,” said John Nkengasong, director of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new deadly wave could widen the gap between the richest and poorest countries in the world. Unlike in prosperous countries, African economies cannot afford to repeat the hard barriers of last year, which according to the International Monetary Fund have driven the continent into its worst recession since records began.

African countries are also still waiting for a vaccine. While 50 of the richest countries in the world administered about 40 million doses, only two in sub-Saharan Africa – the island states of Mauritius and the Seychelles – began rolling out shots. The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned last week that the storage of vaccines by rich countries is a “catastrophic moral failure.”

“The price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the poorest countries in the world,” he said.

These dynamics have led many scientists to warn of a further increase in infections during the winter in the Southern Hemisphere in May and June.

“We are going to get a third wave, even a fourth … There is no light at the end of the tunnel for African countries,” said Tivani Mashamba, professor of diagnostic research at the University of Pretoria. “This pandemic has just begun.”

To be sure, the known number of deaths in Africa is still much lower than in the USA and Europe. The lack of testing capability, limited access to data and secret governments have made it difficult to determine the true extent of the virus in much of the continent.

Scientists in Zambia tested corpses in the main morgue in Lusaka for Covid-19 during the country’s first spate of infections between June and September and found that almost 20% were positive. Only a fraction were tested for the disease before they died. The average age of those who died from Covid-19 was 48, much lower than in developed countries.

The Tanzanian government maintains that it is free of the virus and has criminalized reporting on the pandemic. However, scientists in Ghana recently found the South African coronavirus strain in a traveler from Tanzania.

The boom is hurting 1.2 billion people underfunded healthcare systems across the continent. Hospital beds are running out in Zambia and Uganda, forcing many people to be treated at home. From Senegal to South Africa, thousands of workers walk in shared minibus taxis despite a record increase in new infections. Even in countries like Rwanda, which was praised during the first wave for its effective lock-in and oversight policies, the recent increase in business was much greater.

“We see a range of patients coming through and turning patients away,” said Rashida Ferrand, a professor of international health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who also works at the main Covid-19 treatment center in Parirenyatwa. hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. “It is according to the principle that comes first, the first time.”

All 60 places in the Covid-19 isolation ward in the hospital were occupied, as were the four intensive care units in the hospital, while many nurses became ill.

In the first two weeks of January, about 40% of health workers at the main public hospitals in Harare who had Covid-19 symptoms tested positive, according to doctors who run the program. Just this month, the country lost its foreign, transportation and provincial ministers to Covid-19.

In southern Africa, the recent increase in infections coincided with the discovery of the South African variant, which according to researchers is up to 50% more transmissible than earlier versions. During the holidays, thousands of migrant workers moved home from South Africa and took the new strain on buses to neighboring Zimbabwe, Mozambique and nearby Zambia, which increased in number in the coming weeks.

Researchers in Zambia and doctors in Botswana quickly found that patients there became ill from the variant. Other countries, such as Zimbabwe, do not have the infrastructure to set up viruses found in Covid-19 tests.

Meanwhile, there is an acute shortage of oxygen on a continent where there are fewer fans than in New York, with less than 1% of the population in Africa.

In Zimbabwe and Nigeria, a black market for oxygen containers has sprung up on social media, forcing relatives of the sick to offer each other too much for little stock.

UniGas, one of Zimbabwe’s main suppliers of medical oxygen, directs more than 100 requests a day by family members looking for oxygen tanks and concentrators to treat diseases at home. The company added staff and extra shifts to disinfect and refill bottles. “We work 24 hours a day,” said Kuda Katurura, executive director of the company.

In Nigeria, the air force is producing an emergency oxygen supply following an increase in cases in Lagos, the population city of the continent. There are particularly shortages in public hospitals, where medics say they are forced to ration oxygen and in some cases deny treatment.

“We only have a small amount of oxygen in the ICU for the most severe cases,” said Folarin Opawoye, a doctor in Lagos. “We have to carry between floors with containers to try to save the patients.”

In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, the government is struggling to keep its citizens at social distance, like a nightmare.

“Those who are in power, curfew or no curfew, they have the means to take care of their families,” said Mamadou Fall, a driver who usually takes visitors to and from the city’s international airport. “But we have to take into account the poor people who live in neighborhoods.”

Write to Joe Parkinson at [email protected] and Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected]