In the absence of data, experts can make hugely different claims.
“Mortality due to covid in the African continent is not a big public issue,” said Dorian Jobe, West Africa’s program manager for Dockers with Borders. What he called “crazy predictions” on Covid – the United Nations said in April that 3.3 million Africans would die from it, for example – a harsh lockdown was imposed. The economic and social effects of this will be felt in Africa for decades, said Dr.
But researchers at the other end of the spectrum have just revealed that there was a huge, hidden eruption in the Sudanese capital. In the absence of a good death registration system, they used molecular and serological surveys and online online distribution on Facebook, where people reported their symptoms and whether they were being tested. Researchers calculated that Covid-19 killed 16,000 more people than the 477 confirmed deaths in Khartoum in mid-November, with a population approximately Wisconsin.
Khartoum is the only city in a vast, diverse continent that has a variety of approaches to fighting epidemics. But many factors that researchers cite as why Covid-19 caseload can be greatly weakened – the stigma, people are unable to test, the fact that the threshold for reacting to any disease is high – is true in many African countries.
“Every time someone says, ‘I’m so glad Africa survived,’ my toes just curl up,” said May Sun Dahab, an infectious disease epidemiologist at King’s College Ledge London who works on the Khartoum study.
Mr. Agunbayde, the registrar of Lagos, fills out a table every month to find out the cause of death. There are about a dozen categories to choose from. Age worthy. Malaria. Maternal mortality.
There is no Covid-19 column, although he said that sometimes he crossed the AIDS / HIV column and left Covid. Probably many Africans are dying of Covid-19, but their deaths are being misidentified – studies suggest they were at the beginning of an epidemic in the United States.
