By Winnie Kamau
Nairobi, Kenya: The fast spreading Omicron variant of COVID-19 has seen a six-week surge in cases reported in Africa as it experienced its fourth pandemic wave. The Omicron mutant is flattening the curve making it the shortest-lived surge to date in the continent where cumulative cases have now exceeded 10 million.
According to World Health Organization Africa (WHO) so far 10.2 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in Africa. Weekly cases plateaued in the seven days to 9th January from the week before. Southern Africa, which saw a huge increase in infections during the pandemic wave, recorded a 14% decline in infections over the past week. South Africa, where Omicron was first reported, saw a 9% fall in week of 11th January.
WHO says only the North and West Africa isstill seeing an increase of cases even as the Omicron variant has plateaud in Africa and dropped by 2% with infections declining across the continent.
Across the continent, though, deaths rose by 64% in the past week mainly due to infection of people of high risk with fatalities recorded so far in the 4th wave with dropped number of hospitilization has been low.
In South Africa, for instance, around 9% of its over 5600 intensive care unit beds are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients.
“Early indications suggest that Africa’s fourth wave has been steep and brief but no less destabilizing. The crucial pandemic countermeasure badly needed in Africa still stands, and that is rapidly and significantly increasing COVID-19 vaccinations. The next wave might not be so forgiving,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
Testing, which is crucial to COVID-19 detection and surveillance including genomic, rose modestly by 1.6% over the past week with over 90 million mostly doing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were carried out across the continent. 23 countries recorded a high positivity rate of over 10% over the past week.
Across Africa, WHO is supporting countries to bolster genomic sequencing through trainings in key areas such as bioinformatics and specimen handling. The Organization is also helping procure and deliver critical laboratory equipment and supplies to countries.
30 African countries have detected the Omicron variant while the Delta variant has been reported in 42 countries in Africa.
“Omicron is the most contagious varinat but less severe of the variant” says Dr. Anita Graham, Intensivist, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
At the current vaccination rate, Africa is already too behind in vaccinating which remains far to low at 10% compared to 50% of the world’s that is fully vaccinated.
“Only 7 countries met the target to vaccinate at 40% by 2022, 26 countries have vaccinated 10% of their population. The vaccination bottleneck is the supply of the vaccines. The vaccines are to limit severe infection and death and safeguards health workers from being overwhelmed by cases” says Dr. Abdou Salam Gueye, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, WHO Regional Office for Africa.
According to Alain Poy, Regional Immunization Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, WHO Regional Office for Africa noted that only 2 countries in Africa had achieved 70% of population that is Seychelles and Mauritius.
“6million Africans are vaccinated every week with an expectation to have 34million weekly inorder to reach 70% target in Africa. Only 136 million Africans have been fully vaccinated out of 1 billion target” says Alain.
Adding “26 countries have fully vaccinated 10% of their population while 7 countries have fully vaccinated 40% of the population including Seychelles, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia, Botswana, Rwanda and Cape Verde” explains Poy.
According to the our World in Data 59.5% of the population in the worls have at least received one dose of Covid-19 vaccines, 9.56 billion doses of vaccines have been administered globally and 34.97 million vaccines are administered daily.
According to Dr. Anita on patients who were admitted because of Covid-19 Omicron variant “Unvaccinated patients were the ones admitted with the Omicron variant mainly, patients who had been vaccinated more than a year and vaccinated patients who had comorbidity”.
Currently only one country in Africa that has not vaccinated its citizenry noted WHO.
“Eritrea is the only country in Africa which has not started vaccinating in Africa” noted Alain.
“This year should mark a turning point in Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination drive. With vast swaths of the population still unvaccinated, our chances of limiting the emergence and impact of deadly variants are frighteningly slim,” said Dr Moeti. “We have the know-how and the tools and with a concerted push we can certainly tip the balance against the pandemic.”
