The mystery of the evolution of COVID-19 in Africa: Despite the darkest scenarios, the overall balance is low. Unexpected explanation from the expert News, Foreign news | Freedom

Congested cities, poor hygiene and the impossibility of social distancing in the community, where families often share a single room, were elements that heralded a COVID epidemic with severe effects in Africa.

“Population density is a key factor. If you can’t distance yourself, the virus is spreading,” explains Professor Salim Abdool Karim, head of the government’s team of medical advisers on COVID in South Africa.

So the experts expected the worst.

“We thought we were heading for total disaster,” said Professor Shabir Madhi, one of the country’s leading virologists.

Even the most optimistic scenarios showed that hospitals in South Africa, which has the best healthcare system on the continent, will be overwhelmed.

Specifically, just over 14,000 deaths were confirmed, in a population of almost 60 million.

Although not many deaths have been reported, say 50%, South Africa is still doing relatively well in the first wave of the pandemic, as are other countries on the continent.

Extremely low mortality has been reported, in fact much lower than in South Africa, in other African countries, from Egypt and Morocco to Kenya or Ghana.

Ghana, for example, has only 280 deaths out of a population of nearly 30 million, while Kenya has 577 deaths out of more than 51 million.

And in this case the official figures are probably below the real ones, but even so, they are very low.

Possible explanations

“Most African states don’t even have a peak in the crisis. I don’t understand why. I am completely disoriented,” says Professor Karim.

Professor Madhi agrees. “It’s an enigma. It’s incredible,” he says.

But as the pandemic has progressed and statistical evidence has been gathered, experts are no longer so convinced that the continent’s relative success is driven solely by this demographic factor.

“Age is not that important a factor,” says Professor Karim.

Obviously, firm lockdowns, instituted quite early in the epidemic, were also important.

Professor Karim is also cautious about this: “I will not venture until I say that Africa has been through the worst.”

A surprising explanation

But in recent days, a new theory has taken shape at the Department of Vaccine Analysis and Infectious Diseases at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

In the refrigerator of this hospital, located near Johannesburg, there are blood samples collected during a previous influenza vaccination campaign.

Experts wonder if studying these samples could show that people in South Africa, and on the continent in general, have been much more exposed to infections from other coronaviruses and thus have acquired some degree of immunity to COVID- 19.

It is a hypothesis. The existence of a pre-existing level of immunity could explain why the epidemic did not manifest itself as it did in other parts of the world.

Professor Shabir Madhi, Virologist from South Africa:

Common coronaviruses, which cause common colds or flu, are obviously found in every country.

But South African scientists are now speculating that its widespread use in poor and crowded communities in Africa has led to a higher degree of immunity.

“I can’t think of anything else to explain the large number of asymptomatic or mildly ill patients. The figure is completely incredible,” says Professor Madhi, who ironically believes that poverty on the continent has had a beneficial effect for the first time.

Of course, skeptics could cite Brazil as a counterexample, with its crowded favelas, where the death toll skyrocketed during the pandemic.

However, writes the BBC, the South African experts’ hypothesis has yet to be tested, as it was discovered that the hospital’s blood samples did not hold to the standard required for scientific analysis.

The research team is looking for new samples, but until then, the mystery of the mild epidemic wave in Africa remains unsolved.

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