The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Thursday urged African countries to urgently boost their efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases in the continent has exceeded half a million, reported Reuters.
The call was made by John Nkengasong, head of the Africa CDC, as the new infections across Africa rose by 24 percent in the past week.
“The pandemic is gaining full momentum,” Nkengasong said during a virtual news conference from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
He urged African countries to increase testing and tracing and encourage the use of face masks.
“We must adopt an aggressive and bold approach: #maskonallfaces, ramp up Test, Trace, and Treat, strengthen community response. This will save lives and save (the) economy,” Nkengasong wrote on Twitter.
He said Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Algeria account for 71% of coronavirus infections of the 512,039 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the African continent. While some governments are reluctant to expose their poor health systems to outside scrutiny, others are either too poor or conflict-ridden to carry out significant testing.
Nkengasong said the hospitals will become overwhelmed as numbers of cases continue to rise.
“That is something that is happening already. We will continue to see it as the pandemic expands,” he added.
Although the coronavirus is spreading fast across the African continent, many countries are gradually lifting lockdown restrictions in a bid to revive their economies. Earlier this week, the Kenya government announced the easing of movement restrictions.
On Thursday, the African Union Commission announced it had launched the Consortium for COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trial (CONCVACT).
The initiative is aimed to secure more than 10 late-stage vaccine clinical trials as early as possible “by bringing together global vaccine developers and funders, as well as African organizations that facilitate clinical trials.”
