COVID-19 recoveries in Africa has crossed 81% as the number of cases dropped by 10 % over four weeks.
This is according to Africa CDC who said that the number of new infections across the continent has been falling steadily over the past four weeks.
However, several countries have been seeing an increase in new infections, with testing also reducing in many countries.
Countries seeing rising cases
Morocco and Tunisia, for example, have witnessed a sustained increase in new cases, while the WHO put Libya as a country seeing a rapid growth of new cases. The two, Morocco and Tunisia, were among the countries to have put the illness under control.
Morocco, especially, saw the new numbers of cases over the past week exceed those by South Africa and Ethiopia. South Africa is the worst-hit country in the continent, while Ethiopia is one of the countries seeing a high rise in cases. Uganda and Rwanda have also been witnessing rising cases.
Countries with declining cases
However, Algeria and Egypt, other hard-hit countries in Africa, have seen declining cases. Kenya is also witnessing declining cases but has witnessed changes in testing policies. This has reduced the number of tests done in one day.
So far, theelephant.info puts the number of COVID-19 infections at 1,382,370. Recoveries, meanwhile, rose to 1,133,415. That puts the recovery rate in the continent at 81.9%.
Deaths, however, continued to rise, with the continent seeing 33,429 confirmed fatalities, giving the COVID a CFR of 2.4% in Africa.
Inadequate testing
The WHO, however, says that the policy in many countries in Africa makes full interpretation of data difficult. Many countries are only testing those who present symptoms.
Furthermore, only nine countries account for 77% of all tests in the continent – South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda.
Additionally, most of the continent’s population are young people, who are often less likely to present COVID symptoms. Thus, fully extrapolating COVID spread is difficult if most of those infected don’t show symptoms and are not getting tested.
