Africa passes 7M COVID-19 cases

By Addis Getachew

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AA) – The number of people in Africa infected by the coronavirus has reached over 7 million, an update by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

At least 177,400 people have died due to the COVID-19-induced complications, while 6.1 million patients have recuperated.

The number of laboratory tests conducted so far in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic has stood at 61.5 million.

According to the update, the continent of 1.3 billion people remained the least vaccinated with less than 2% of the population inoculated.

Of the 103.5 million jabs the African countries had received through COVAX, bilaterally or through the Africa Vaccines Acquisition Technical Team (AVATT), 70.6 million jabs have been administered so far.

The World Health Organization said in a statement on July 1: “Cases have increased in Africa for six weeks running and rose by 25% week-on-week to almost 202,000 in the week ending on June 27th, reaching nine-tenths of the continent’s previous record of 224,000 new cases. Deaths rose by 15% across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000 in the same period.”

“With case numbers doubling in Africa every three weeks, the Delta variant is spreading to a growing number of countries. It has been reported in 16 countries, including nine with surging cases,” it said.

According to WHO, it was the most contagious variant yet, an estimated 30%-60% more transmissible than other variants.

“And it is dominant in South Africa, which accounted for more than half of Africa’s cases in the same period,” it said. “According to the latest country reports, the Delta variant was detected in 97% of samples sequenced in Uganda and 79% of samples sequenced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”