Africa is transitioning out of the pandemic phase of its Covid-19 outbreak and moving towards a situation where it will be managing the virus long term, the World Health Organization’s regional head for Africa has said.
“The pandemic is moving into a different phase,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti said. “We think that we’re moving now, especially with the vaccination expected to increase, into what might become a kind of endemic living with the virus.”
Moeti also said the number of Covid infections in Africa could be seven times higher than official data suggests, and deaths from the virus two to three times higher.
“We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example, have led to an underestimation of the cases,” Moeti told a briefing.
Moeti’s comments confirm what has increasingly been suspected by a number of researchers who have been working to understand the so-called “Africa paradox” - why official reporting from African countries had failed to capture the same distribution of infections and deaths as elsewhere in the world.
Some have suggested that the much younger age profile across countries on the continent may have contributed, but a consensus is coalescing around significant undercounting in countries with weak health surveillance systems that have failed to pick up both infections and deaths over the past two years.
According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, recorded infections across Africa stood at more than 11 million as of 10 February and deaths at 250,000. If the WHO’s estimates are correct the real figures could be nearer 70 million and 750,000 respectively.
Concern about undercounting have been driven by a number of studies and serological surveys – not least in South Africa, which has one of the continent’s most sophisticated disease surveillance – that suggest higher rates of infection than previously thought.
African is the latest region that the WHO has suggested may be transitioning out of the pandemic phase and moving towards a more stable situation.
The WHO’s European regional director, Hans Kluge, said last week that the continent could soon enter a “long period of tranquillity” that amounted to a “ceasefire” in the pandemic thanks to the less severe Omicron variant, high levels of immunity and the arrival of warmer spring weather.
His upbeat assessment said the 53-country region, which includes the UK, was in a position of higher protection that could “bring us enduring peace”, even if a new, more virulent variant than Omicron should emerge.
He said Europe had recorded 12 million new cases in a week, the highest single weekly total of the pandemic, with about 22% of all tests returning a positive result.
