Why is Africa less affected by the coronavirus pandemic? With more than 1.4 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 35,000 deaths, Africa has been considerably “spared” compared to other continents.
The World Health Organization (WHO) seeks to understand this phenomenon and launched, Thursday, September 24, 2020, research to detail the first tracks that can explain this situation.
Because according to the prospects of the start of the pandemic, many believed that Africa would record millions of deaths due to low poverty and health systems.
Today, the number of cases decreases in most African countries, which intrigues the WHO. The organization then set out to compare the genetic code of several samples of SARS-COV-2 in Africa, and it appears that the virus is similar to that circulating in Europe.
How to explain then that Africa was “spared”? A first track relates to strict containment measures adopted very early in most African countries. A second track relates to the experience that African countries have in the treatment of many infectious diseases such as malaria or Ebola, despite failing health systems.
Other tracks still exist and await to be dug such as the age of the population, mobility, road networks, the number of car per capita. All this plays on the dissemination capacity of the virus in countries.
