Africa’s top health official said Thursday that another variant of a new coronavirus appears to have emerged in Nigeria, but more investigation is needed.
John Nkengasong, director of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at an online news conference that the virus in Kenya is on a different spectrum than the variants in Britain and South Africa, the Associated Press reported. Nkengasong said the Nigerian CDC and the African Center of Excellence in Infectious Disease Genomics will study additional samples.
The report said the discovery of new mutant viruses in Nigeria and South Africa prompted the African Center for Disease Control to hold an emergency meeting this week. Cases are increasing rapidly in both Nigeria and South Africa, Kengesson said. There has been a 52 percent increase in Nigeria and a 40 percent increase in South Africa in the past week. But Kengesson said he believes the current mutation of the virus will not affect the deployment of a new coronavirus vaccine as Africa unfolds.
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with a population of more than 200 million. The country has more than 80,000 new coronavirus cases, fewer than many other countries on the continent. Data from the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention show that more than 2.6 million cases of new coronavirus have been reported in Africa, accounting for 3.3% of global cases. In addition, 61,000 people have died from neo-coronavirus pneumonia.
It is very likely that the infection rate in Africa is much higher than what has been notified, Kengesson said.
At the start of the new coronavirus outbreak this year, global health experts had been concerned about whether Africa’s fragile health systems could cope. But the actual outbreak in Africa is far less severe than in Europe and the United States.
However, with the new coronavirus outbreak returning to the continent again and with viral mutations appearing in South Africa and Kenya, medical experts fear that worse is yet to come and that Africa could face a new and more deadly threat.
The overall medical situation in African countries is worse than in Europe, the United States and other regions in all aspects, including the number of hospitals, equipment and the level of doctors. In South Africa, where the most new coronavirus infections and deaths have occurred, the epidemic has hit its health care system so hard that quotas are to be imposed on medical treatment for the elderly, according to the New York Times.
As stricter epidemic control measures disappear and more people stop seeing the new coronavirus as a serious threat, public health officials fear that a second wave of the epidemic in Africa could be much worse than the first.
Recent Comments