A new World Health Organization (WHO) study claims up to 65% population of the African continent has been infected with the coronavirus so far, reported Reuters. The UN health body estimates that the number of actual cases may have been nearly 100 times more than those reported.
The WHO report analyzed 151 COVID-19 studies in Africa based on blood samples taken from people on the continent between January 2020 and December 2021.
It was found that the percentage of people exposed to the virus jumped from just three percent in June 2020 to 65 percent by September last year, translating into about 800 million infections. In contrast, only about 8 million cases had been officially reported to the WHO during that period.
The latest study suggests the officially confirmed coronavirus case numbers were “likely only scratching the surface of the real extent of coronavirus infections in Africa”.
“A new meta-analysis of standardized seroprevalence study revealed that the true number of infections could be as much as 97 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases,” said WHO Africa boss Matshidiso Moeti.
She said the data suggests that more than two-thirds of all Africans have been exposed to the Covid-19 virus. She added that producing accurate data on the continent, which largely has inadequate and under-resourced health facilities, has been difficult as a large proportion of people on the continent show no symptoms.
“This undercounting is occurring worldwide and it’s no surprise that the numbers are particularly large in Africa where there are so many cases with no symptoms,” Moeti said in a statement.
The analysis found that around 67% of African people with COVID-19 showed no symptoms when infected with the disease, a higher percentage than in other world regions.
Moeti said despite declining infections and high exposure to the virus in African countries, the fight against COVID-19 cannot be declared over.
She called for increased vaccination rates as only about 15% of people in Africa have been immunized against COVID-19.
