The World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Marchdiso Mutti, said on the 29th that the current African population in the implementation of epidemic prevention measures, coupled with coronavirus vaccination rate and low levels of nucleic acid testing, some African countries are facing the risk of a rebound in the epidemic.
Moody said at a video news conference the same day, African countries should suspend large-scale gatherings and strictly implement wearing masks and other preventive measures, otherwise the region’s new infections and deaths are likely to rise sharply.
Mr Mutti said the surge in new infections and deaths in India, as well as the rise in new infections and deaths in other parts of the world, were clear signs that the new outbreak was not yet over in Africa.
Most of the new confirmed cases in Africa are not found in close contacts that have been identified, and most African countries do not track cluster cases and close contacts satisfactoryly, Murty said. African countries should step up nucleic acid detection and tracking, while accelerating vaccination and improving the implementation of prevention and control measures to avoid the deterioration of the epidemic and the overloading of public health systems.
According to a recent WHO risk assessment of coronavirus outbreak in 46 African countries, three countries face a very high risk of outbreak rebound, 20 countries are at high risk, 22 countries are at medium risk and only one country is at low risk. WHO says 31 of these countries have an average of less than 10 nucleic acid tests per 10,000 people per week, suggesting that current statistics may not be sufficient to reflect the reality of outbreaks in Africa.
According to data released by the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the evening of the 29th, a total of 4536,258 confirmed cases of coronavirus pandemic in Africa, a cumulative total of 121,189 deaths.
