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    Africa had the worst week since the start of the pandemic

    Matshidiso Moeti, director for Africa at the World Health Organization (WHO), announced that Africa had “the worst week since the start of the pandemic”, with a 20% increase in cases. The situation will get worse with the third wave.

    In the week ending July 4th, “we had 251,000 new cases, an increase of 20% compared to the previous week and 12% compared to the peak in January”, he revealed Matshidiso moeti, quoted by Bloomberg.

    New covid-19 cases have increased for the seventh week in a row and are on the rise. double every 18 days. This scenario does not predict that the peak of new infections, and the decline that follows, is already in sight.

    The next two months are going to be very difficult to the mainland because of the transmission of the Delta variant”, said the official. There are at least 16 African countries with a resurgence of the virus, ten of which already have the Delta variant.

    This variant, as well as the lack of vaccines in African countries, made the scenario worse. Until now, the continent had been spared the worst of the pandemic because of the young population, less affected by the disease, and the rapid response of public health measures in many of the countries. But everything changed.

    The Public emphasizes that the South Africa it is, at the moment, the most affected country, with days registering more than 26 thousand new infections. The country has 333 new cases per million inhabitants (seven-day moving average), followed by Botswana, with 261, and further away Libya, with 97, and Cape Verde, with 90, according to data from Our World in Data.

    Portugal currently has 242 cases per million, but a greater number of people vaccinated.

    Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Zambia, Rwanda and Tunisia are all experiencing dramatic increases in infections, with the number of hospitalizations rising by more than 40% on the continent in recent weeks.

    Tom Kenyon, from the HOPE project, warned: “all the alarms should be sounding“As these figures show that, in Africa, the number of new cases will soon exceed those in Asia.

    “Given the horrors we’ve just seen in India, this should be cause for alarm and action,” he said, speaking to CNBC.

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