At the primordial spread of covid-19, many experts around the globe forecasted a clairvoyance future for Africa and gave many premonitions on how Africa will become a graveyard. Today, Africa against all odds has defied these apocalyptic prophesies and have left experts perplexed.
With over one million cases and 25,000 deaths, Africa’s covid-19 cases remain low in comparison with its counterparts, despite recording its first case within the same time range. This has led to many studies and speculations among scientists about the behavioral pattern and spread of the virus.
This slow spread has been related with factors like humidity and stronger immune system among Africans. But in comparison with the Middle East, Africa has a lower humidity than some regions were the virus is spreading at an exponential rate.
Also, there is a high rate of morbidity and mortality among blacks who live in Europe and America, although this maybe due to some social stratification, like low incomes and lower health insurance among the black population in Europe. But on a deeper level there is more to the low spread that meets the eyes.
To understand the trajectory of this pandemic in Africa they’re some swift steps African countries took to keep the virus at bay. Though not totally effective, but it really helped in slowing the spread of the virus.
Total Lockdown
The first step many African countries took immediately after recording their first cases, was total lockdown, the lockdown in African countries was more intense, albeit, a lot of peopled died in the process of enforcing these lockdown.
Generally, this grim events and the fear of authority coupled with fear of abuse from the law enforcement agencies, somehow projected a fear into the subconsciousness of many citizens and made them complied with the rules, despite lack of government palliatives and a deteriorated economic situation, unlike their western counterparts they were forced to comply with the rules of the lockdown.
They was also a quick closure of the border, the leaders understood that in a scenario where the hospitals are overwhelmed, it would be a total disaster based on the dearth of healthcare system. This clairvoyance was the reason for the quick border closure initiated by various African government.
Rapid molecular testing
Another factor that played a major role in the slow spread of the virus was the utilization of molecular laboratory diagnostic that was used earlier for diseases like drug resistance tuberculosis, HIV and Lassa fever to scale up its testing, this integration of molecular testing has helped improved the test capacity and to quickly isolate the cases when one is found?
Contact Tracing
With a lockdown in place it was more easier to trace contacts of those who tested positive for the infection. Applying this pragmatism based on experience from the Ebola pandemic, helped in curbing the spread of the virus. while this solutions were tried in other countries, in Africa it was more effective due to the fact that it was implemented early. It helped in slowing down the spread of the virus in many African countries.
Immunity and Research
Several antibody surveys suggests far more Africans have been infected with the coronavirus, this discrepancy has puzzled immunologists at Kenya Medical research institute and scientists around the world.
This led to a research by a Kenyan immunologist, Sophie Uyoga and her team to conduct an anti body test on 3000 blood donors. After the test they reached a finding that one in 20 Kenyans aged 15-64 that is approximately 1.6 million people has antibodies to SARS cov2 an indication of past covid 19 infection. This put Kenya on the same level with Spain in mid may when it was descending from the peak of the infection. Despite this, Kenya death toll stood at 100, while its hospital were reporting less number of covid 19 symptoms.
Another survey by a research team in Malawi that tested 500 asymptomatic health workers found also discovered similar thing. The research was conducted by the Malawian immunologist Kondwani Jambo of the Malawi-Liverpool welcome trust clinical research programme. The research concluded that up to 12.3% of the asymptomatic health workers have been exposed to the virus, based on those findings and mortality ratio of covid19 elsewhere, the death ratio at that time was eight times less than expected.
Also, scientists who surveyed 10000 in Nempula and Pemba in Mozambique found the presence of antibodies in 3% to 10% of participants, depending on their occupations, market vendors have the highest rate of antibodies followed by health workers. Despite these statistics, at the time of the research only 300 cases were discovered in Nampula, a city of 750000.
Also an epidemiologist named yap Blum who works for epicenter africa said he found antibodies in people from Cameroon, although his study wasn’t published, but the reality seems to re enforce this fact.
Albeit, this doesn’t clarify scientist perceptions, another answer to the riddle maybe that Africa misses so many cases based on its low tests capacity, even at that, one expects a high mortality rate from the virus in Africa but the mortality ratio from natural death had remained stable and covid19 death rate very low.
Another factor may also be due to the youthfulness of African population. For example the median age in Spain is 45 while in some African countries it revolves around 20 and 18. These factors perhaps may have helped keep the virus at bay.
Also, Africa’s exposure to other forms of corona virus may have helped induced antibodies needed to fend off the virus, but antibodies wane overtime. In all, there are disparities in data and many obscurities in trying to crack the African formidable defense to the pandemic. While scientists are trying to crack the code to Africa’s resistance against the virus, the virus has inspired creativity and has spurred many African into self discovery.
Inspirations
While the pandemic continues to spread and wreck havoc across the world, on the other hand it has inspired Africa’s government and citizens in many ways. Maybe due to the fact that hard times create strong men. Many African government are now looking for a way to diversify their economy especially those whose economy are majorly tourism.
In Nigeria where oil is the major source of revenue, the government is taking a shot on generating revenue through taxation and stamp duties, and shifting the economy towards more production in agriculture, in Cross River state of Nigeria the government has opened a face mask factory and has exported it to other states, same as Senegal and other countries.
Innovatively, Innoson (an automaker brand in Nigeria) offered to build ventilators and a Nigerian engineer built a ventilator using locally sourced materials. In Rwanda drones are used to distribute drugs and served many purpose during the pandemic. Also many African online stores like jumia have seen a surge in business and are defying the pandemic against all odds.
While the pandemic continues to spread, the mystery of how Africa is defying this grim reality against all apocalyptic predictions and have turned it to a source of inspiration still baffles expert. although, not currently clear, but with all indices it seems the virus has spared Africa, maybe it’s a miracle or ingenuity, whatever it is, time shall unravel this mystery.
– Sunday Jude Abah writes from Kogi state.
