A recent study by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that the actual number of COVID-19 infections in Africa could be up to 97 times higher than official statistics.
Since Africa saw its first case in Egypt in mid-February 2020, there have been some 11,360,305 cases and more than 250,000 deaths, relatively few compared to other regions according to statistics from the Africa Center COVID-19 Dashboard. for Disease Control.
A report published on Thursday by the WHO suggested that some 800 million people may have already been infected in Africa last September. This is at least two-thirds of the people who live on the continent with more than 1.3 billion inhabitants.
An Aljazeera report said the world body suggested official statistics were “likely only scratching the surface of the true extent of coronavirus infections in Africa”.
“A new meta-analysis of a standardized seroprevalence study revealed that the actual number of infections could be up to 97 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Africa chief.
“This suggests that more than two-thirds of all Africans have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus,” he added.
The study
According to the WHO report, about 150 studies published between January 2020 and December 2022 were analyzed, indicating that exposure to the virus increased from just three percent in June 2020 to 65 percent in September 2021. .
“In real terms, this means that in September 2021, instead of the 8.2 million reported cases, there were 800 million,” said Ms Moeti.
The global average of actual infection numbers is believed to be 16 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases, the study estimated.
Nearly 500 million infections have been recorded worldwide as of Saturday afternoon, data from worldometer.info He showed. More than 6.2 million people have died from the pandemic.
poor evidence
The WHO said the study built on previous ones and a consensus in the global health community that Africa’s poor testing regimen for COVID-19 masks the true spread and severity of the disease on the continent.
In the early days of the 2020 pandemic, case modeling had suggested that cases on the continent could be much higher than reported due to undetected infections.
Africa’s relatively early successes in fighting the spread of the virus were remarkable, and the number of cases has not risen as fast as in any other region of the world.
But the widespread lack of testing reported across the continent is undermining any progress made, health experts say. They believe the cases could go undetected even with the wide variations in testing policies across the 54 countries on the continent.
Statistics from the Africa CDC show that 103,710,049 tests have been carried out so far on a continent of more than 1.3 billion people.
Even so, there are huge discrepancies between countries.
South Africa has conducted the largest number of tests in Africa with more than 24 million of the country’s more than 60 million people tested.
Egypt, where Africa’s index case was detected, has tested some 3.6 million of its more than 105 million people.
But Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent with more than 200 million inhabitants, has made only 5 million.
No adverse impact despite poor testing
Meanwhile, despite low testing numbers in Africa, there is no clear evidence to show that undetected infections have had adverse consequences on the continent compared to other regions of the world.
The head of the Africa CDC, Ms Moeti, attributed the development to the fact that most people in Africa do not seem to show clear symptoms of the disease, “which makes it difficult to attribute a sick person to COVID-19” .
Various analyzes have also suggested that Africa’s young population acted as a tipping point against severe COVID-19 illness.
In Ghana, the WHO study found that young people were the most infected.
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