Juju juice pushers mystified as Africa avoids COVID disaster
When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions.
Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize.
There is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated.
For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.
Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said African leaders haven’t gotten the credit they deserve for acting quickly, citing Mali’s decision to close its borders before COVID-19 even arrived.
The impact of the coronavirus has also been relatively muted in poor countries, where experts predicted outbreaks would prove disastrous.
Hashmat Arifi, a 23-year-old student, said he hadn’t seen anyone wearing a mask in months, including at a recent wedding he attended alongside hundreds of guests. In his university classes, more than 20 students routinely sit unmasked in close quarters.
“I haven’t seen any cases of corona lately,” Arifi said.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-health-pandemics-united-nations-fcf28a83c9352a67e50aa2172eb01a2f