aurora
The World Health Organisation Africa said the continent’s Covid-19 surge now topped the second wave peak of the pandemic.
Experts have given an update of the pandemic’s third wave trajectory across the continent, saying there was a 20 percent increase in new coronavirus cases recorded last week, compared to the week before.
More than 5,7 million coronavirus cases have been recorded in Africa, with 147 000 people having succumbed to Covid-19.
WHO Africa said there’d been a constant rise in coronavirus cases being recorded since the onset of the pandemic’s third wave at the start of May. More than 251 000 new Covid-19 cases had been recorded over the course of last week.
Regional director, Doctor Matshidiso Moeti: “Sixteen African countries are now in resurgence, with Malawi and Senegal added this week and the delta variant has been detected in 10 of these countries.”
Director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, Professor Tulio de Oliveira, said
they were doing genomic surveillance, but the lambda coronavirus variant had not yet been detected in any African country.
“At the moment it’s not a big concern. The real concern at the moment is the delta variant which much more transmissible and which is causing a large number of infections in a very big third wave,” he said.
WHO officials expect Covid-19 vaccine delivery to the continent to pick up significantly in the weeks to come. — Eyewitness News.
Bongani Ndlovu