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When the first case of Africa’s coronavirus was detected in Egypt in February, the rest of the continent prepared for the worst part of a pandemic that has engulfed Europe and spread to the United States, infecting more than 1.6 million all over the world.
Health experts warned of the devastation the deadly virus could cause in Africa, where most hospitals desperately lack equipment and trained personnel.
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Since then, the coronavirus has spread to 52 African countries, but despite a steady increase in the number of confirmed cases, the continent continues to lag behind the global curve of infections and deaths.
Still, the World Health Organization warned last month that Africa was facing a dramatic evolution of the pandemic, even as governments imposed restrictions to help curb the spread. The continent appears to be poorly equipped to handle a major health crisis and is struggling to test enough to monitor virus cases.
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To date, the new respiratory illness has infected more than 12,800 people on the continent and has killed at least 692, according to a count compiled by AFP.
Only the Comoros archipelago and the small kingdom of Lesotho have yet to detect any cases.
South Africa is the most affected country, with more than 2,000 confirmed cases and 25 deaths recorded so far, far behind the more than 871,000 cases and 71,000 deaths counted in Europe to date.
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Experts, however, caution that the tide is rising.
“Over the past four days we can see that the numbers have already doubled,” said Michel Yao, manager of the Africa emergency response program for the World Health Organization (WHO).
“If the trend continues … some countries may face a huge spike very soon,” Yao said.
WHO Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti echoed the concern, adding that the spread of Covid-19 outside major cities opened “a new front in our fight against this virus.”
Are the numbers underestimated?
Possibly the largest question mark in coronavirus testing in Africa, compounded by a global lack of testing capacity.
Despite the donation of more than a million coronavirus test kits by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, most African countries lack the necessary equipment to detect the disease.
South Africa has so far only managed to test around 73,000 of its 57 million inhabitants.
“This is too low for the kind of challenges South Africa faces,” said Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, who aims to scale up to 30,000 tests per day.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, has only carried out 5,000 coronavirus tests to date for a country of 190 million people.
“The testing system is quite overloaded,” admitted a doctor who worked at a private clinic in Lagos, who asked not to be identified.
“It takes time for … the results,” he added. “And are they accurate? We don’t know.”
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The inability to test for the virus has forced several countries to work with vague and sometimes misleading estimates.
Kenya, for example, has forecast that its number of coronavirus cases will reach 10,000 by the end of April.
Ten days a month, the number of detected infections remained below 200.
Kenya Health Ministry Director General Patrick Amoth said earlier this week that it was because they had not conducted community-based testing.
Since then, Kenya has received 7,000 test kits and machines that can process up to 3,000 samples in two hours. The government aims to implement massive tests in the next three weeks.
“We use these machines to reach a larger population and to be able to say … whether we are winning the battle or whether we need to change our strategy,” Amoth said during a televised briefing on Saturday.
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The chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa, John Nkengasong, admitted that Africa’s coronavirus statistics were far from “perfect”.
“We simply lack the means,” he said.
But Nkengasong dismissed claims that a large number of infections had escaped the radar, pointing out that hospitals “would be flooded with people” if that was the case.
Have the locks, the curfews worked?
The late spread of the coronavirus gave African countries some leeway to implement the same measures implemented in Europe to stop the disease.
Governments across the continent reacted ahead of time, closed borders, and imposed blockades and curfews when only a few cases were detected.
Those measures have been difficult to enforce in impoverished and densely populated neighborhoods, where houses are overcrowded and most survive on informal work, making it almost impossible to stay home.
WHO’s Moeti warned that it was “too early to say” whether measures against the coronavirus were slowing the epidemic in Africa.
Meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa said earlier this week that there was “sufficient evidence” to show that a national blockade was “working.”
“In the two weeks prior to closing, the average daily increase in new cases was around 42%. Since the start of the closure, the average daily increase has been around 4%,” Ramaphosa said Thursday, when it announced a 21-day closure extension.
Has Africa had enough time to prepare?
The time gained by African governments could be compensated for by a lack of means.
“There is a severe shortage of critical-case treatment facilities for Covid-19,” said a WHO statement.
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According to the organization, there are barely five intensive care unit beds for every million people in Africa, compared to 4,000 in Europe.
Public hospitals only have 2,000 medical ventilators among them to serve the entire continent.
No one yet dares to make predictions about the proportions that the new coronavirus could reach in Africa.
The WHO noted that 31 countries on the continent had fewer than 100 confirmed cases and believed that “containment was possible.”
However, the threat persists.
“Covid-19 has the potential to cause thousands of deaths,” said WHO’s Moeti. “To also unleash economic and social devastation.”
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