Paris, FRANCE
The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study that says nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected.
Authors of the
research, published Friday in the journal BMJ Global Health, predicted a lower
infection rate than in other parts of the world like Europe and the US, with
fewer severe cases and deaths.
But while they said
many African nations had been swift to adopt containment measures, they warned
that health systems could still quickly become overwhelmed.
"Our model points
to the scale of the problem for health systems if containment measures
fail," said the authors.
The study comes amid
stark warnings that Covid-19 threatens a health emergency in developing nations
where fragile health systems are already struggling with an array of other
chronic diseases.
Experts at the World
Health Organization's Africa office modelled likely rates of exposure to the
virus and infection in the 47 countries under its regional remit, which
excludes Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
Some 231 million
people, or 22 per cent (with a range of 16 to 26 per cent) of the one billion
people in the region were expected to be infected in the 12 month period --
most of them showing few or no symptoms.
But an estimated 4.6
million people would need to be admitted to hospital, while 140,000 would have
severe Covid-19 infection and 89,000 would be critically ill.
That would lead to some
150,000 deaths (between 83,000 and 190,000) the study suggested.
The modelling estimates
what would happen for each country over the period of a year from the beginning
of widespread and sustained community transmission.
Researchers warned that
surging hospital admissions for Covid-19 would divert already limited resources
to tackle major health issues in the region, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria
and malnutrition, worsening the impact of coronavirus.
"The region will have fewer deaths, but occurring more in relatively younger age groups, amongst people previously considered healthy -- due to undiagnosed non-communicable diseases," the report said, adding that these trends were already emerging.
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