A Reutter’s tally has shown that total COVID-19 cases in Africa surpassed the 2,000,000 marks despite the slow addition of reported infections compared to other regions around the world.
According to the tally, Africa represents under 4% of the world’s reported cases, which are over 2,012,000 and many experts believe the number is an undercount.
South Africa has the continent’s highest number of reported COVID-19 cases standing at over 750,000, with a death rate of 2.71%, based on a Reuters tally.
South Africa was forced to introduce one of the world’s toughest lockdowns in late March when the country had confirmed 400 cases, the highest in the continent at the time.
Other countries such as Sudan, Chad, and Egypt have reported the highest fatality rates across the continent at 7.81%, 6.28%, and 5.82%, respectively.
Experts indicated that the COVID-19 cases and deaths in Africa are more than what is being recorded and presented to the public because of factors like lack of access to enough testing gears in many African countries.
They believe that many COVID-19 infections and related deaths in Africa are likely being missed as testing rates in the continent of about 1.3 billion people are among the lowest in the world.
The African continent represents nearly 16.7% of the entire world population, and about 15 cases are reported for every 10,000 persons according to experts.
The region’s COVID-19 fatality rate at nearly 2.4% is the third-highest in the world behind Latin America and the Middle East, though total reported deaths are far lower. Africa has reported over 48,000 deaths so far.
Analysts said that unlike other continents like Europe, South America, and the United States, the virus hit Africa later, giving medical personnel time to set up field hospitals, source oxygen, and ventilators, and learn from treatment improvements.
The scientist also added that African governments have experience in battling deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa from 2013 to 2016 therefore this prepared them to deal with the COVID-19 virus.
Meanwhile, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the number of global COVID-19 cases surpassed 50 million as global deaths surpassed the 1 Million mark.
The Johns Hopkins CSSE tally indicated that global cases reached 50,325,072 and have resulted in nearly 1.3 million deaths.
The university also said global cases topped 30 million on September 17 and rose to 40 million on October 19. It took 32 days for the global caseload to jump from 30 million to 40 million, and only 20 days from 40 million to 50 million.