Africa’s coronavirus death rate has been reported to be higher than the global average as the continent struggle with a shortage of oxygen and other resources during this second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The continent’s fatality rate currently stands at 2.5%, which is higher than the global rate of 2.2%, a departure from earlier in the pandemic, when the death rate in Africa was lower than that at the global level.
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According to a report from Reuters, this disclosure was made by the Director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), John Nkengasong, on Thursday, January 21, 2021, during a press conference.
While describing the trend as alarming experts, the continent’s CDC boss pointed out that earlier in the pandemic, Africa’s death rate had been below the global average.
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He said, “The case fatality rate is beginning to be very worrying and concerning for all of us.’’
Nkengasong also said that 21 African countries are now recording Covid-19 death rate of above 3% as the number of countries in the continent with a higher fatality rate than the global average continues to grow.
Some of the countries include Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mali, Sudan and a host of others.
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What you should know
- Africa has so far recorded 3.3 million cases of the coronavirus infections with 82,000 fatalities as at Thursday.
- These figures represent a small fraction of the global total, but cases have been reported to have increased by 14% each week in the last 1 month.
- According to data from Africa CDC, over the past week, cases decreased by nearly 7% compared to the previous week while deaths increased by 10%.
- The continent reported 207,000 new cases in the past week, with South Africa alone reporting 100,000 of those new cases.
