By Kemo Cham
Sierra Leone, alongside West African neighbors Liberia, Mali and Niger are recording some of the highest fatality rates in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, figures from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) for the past week show.
These countries, which also include the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Chad, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria and Angola said identified as countries among the African Union member states that are actively sharing data and which are reporting case fatality rates higher than the global case fatality rate of 3.1%.
The Democratic Republic topped the chart with 7.1%, followed by Chad with 7.0%, Sudan with 6.2% and Liberia with 6.1%. Niger had 5.8%, Egypt had 5.7%, Mali had 4.3% and while Algeria had 4.0%.
Sierra Leone is at the bottom with (3.3% case fatality, beneath Angola with 3.6%.
The Africa CDC is the specialized agency of the African Union (AU) charged with supporting the public health initiatives of member states and strengthening the capacity of their health institutions to deal with disease threats. The agency conducts a weekly press briefing to provide update on progress of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic on the continent.
Its latest weekly briefing was held on Thursday, September 24, attracting journalists via virtual link from across the continent.
According to its epidemiological update, as of Thursday, AU member states had reported 1,429,360 cases and 34,836 deaths, giving a case fatality rate of 2.4% for the continent.
“This accounts for 4.5% of the cases and 3.6% of the deaths reported globally,” said the agency in a statement shared with reporters.
The same data show that globally, as of the same date, the number of cases had risen to about 31 million and over 960, 000 deaths.
“To date, there have been 1,175,353 recoveries reported in Africa, accounting for 82% of the total cases reported,” the Africa CDC said.
It noted that five countries in the region was accounting for 71% of all cases reported. These countries were identified as South Africa with 665,188, representing 47%; Morocco with 107,743, representing 8%; Egypt with 102,375, representing 7%; Ethiopia with 71,083, representing 5%; and Nigeria with 57,724, representing 4%.
The Africa CDC said within the period since the previous press briefing, a week earlier, there 55,462 new cases reported in the region, representing a 9.8% increase in the number of new cases being reported.
For the period 17-23 September, Morocco was at the to of five countries recording the highest number of new cases, with 15,022, followed by South Africa with 11,744, then Libya with 5,931, Tunisia with 4,856 and then Ethiopia with 4,641.
On what seems like a positive note, the continent realized a decrease in new cases of 3% over the past 4 weeks. The West African region notably recorded one of the largest decrease: 14% decrease in the Western region. The south and r=eastern regions recorded 11% and 15% decrease, respectively.
Increases of cases were seen only in the central and northern regions, with 56% and 14%, respectively, other the same period.
The Africa CDC continued with its capacity building for member countries through both virtual and in-country training.
By the end of the week, testing in AU member states had also increased to 14,075,068 tests, marking a 4.9% increase in the week, compared to the previous one. The 10 countries that contributed 78.5% of these tests are: South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Mauritius.
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