Virus enigma: Experts ask why Africa seems to have few cases

JOHANNESBURG: The coronavirus is spreading fast beyond its China birthplace but sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world´s most vulnerable regions, has so far been almost spared — and experts want to know why. More than 2,700 people worldwide have died of COVID-19 and almost 80,000 infected.

Most of these have been in China, but cases are now rising fast in parts of Europe and the Middle East, while the first infection in Latin America was recorded on Wednesday, in Brazil.But across all of Africa, just two cases have surfaced — a tally that has health specialists scratching their heads, given the continent´s close economic ties with China.

“This is the question that everyone is asking, especially as other regions such as South America or Eastern Europe now have cases,” said Amadou Alpha Sall, head of the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, the Senegalese capital. “The current figures could be the reality, it´s hard to know. Maybe it´s because Africa is not that connected. Thumbi Ndung´u, director of a Durban-based infectious disease research centre, SANTHE, said “I don´t think anybody knows” why Africa so far appeared to be unscathed. He also speculated that it could be “there isn´t much travel to that particular part of China from Africa — back and forth”. Or “it could just be a coincidence,” said Ndung´u.

Could it be a coverup, or cases that have gone undetected? Michel Yao, an emergency response expert at WHO Africa, based in the Congolese capital Brazzaville, said these scenarios were most unlikely. To detect and hide cases would require an “exceptionally managed” response, he said. And undetected cases would result in an outbreak that would be “surely detected, because it spreads faster,” Yao said. Could Africa’s predominantly hot climate ward off or even kill the virus?

“There is no current evidence to indicate that climate affects transmission,” said Rodney Adam, who heads the infection control task force at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi.