The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday warned that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is fuelling an aggressive third wave across Africa, with cases climbing faster than all earlier peaks, reported CGTN Africa.
The global health body said that the infection numbers have increased in Africa for six consecutive weeks, up by 25% last week, reaching 202,000 positive cases. The Delta variant accounted for more than half of Africa´s cases last week.
Deaths also rose by 15% across 38 African countries, to nearly 3,000. Also, the demand for oxygen in Africa is now 50 percent higher than at the peak of the first wave, a year ago.
“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in a statement.
The highly contagious Delta variant has been reported in 16 countries so far, accounting for 97 percent of samples sequenced in Uganda and 79 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“The rampant spread of more contagious variants pushes the threat to Africa up to a whole new level,” Moeti said.
The WHO official said that more transmission means more serious illness and more deaths. She urged people to boost prevention measures to stop an emergency from becoming a tragedy.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 5,509,362 as of Thursday afternoon. South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Egypt are the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the Africa CDC.
The WHO has approved eight vaccines for emergency use, however, shipments to Africa have, in effect, dried up.
Dr. Moeti said vaccine dose sharing can help plug the availability gap. She lauded the pledges made by international partners but called for urgent action on allocations.
Only 15 million people, who constitute a mere 1.2% of the African population, have been fully vaccinated so far.
