The days of “very severe” lockdowns as the solution to Covid-19 in Africa are over and countries should rather vaccinate against the virus and scale up rapid testing to identify hotspots and prevent them spreading, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr John Nkengasong, said on Thursday.
Covid-19 cases have been dropping on the continent, which is in a lull between wave peaks. More than 8.5-million cases have been reported in Africa and at least 218,972 deaths to date.
“We are now in the trough [usually two to three months] between the peaks,” Nkengasong said. “This is a period to expand testing and vaccination as much as possible so as not to go back to the peak and the resulting health and economic damage.”
In the past week, North Africa reported a slight increase (1%) in new cases and Central Africa reported a 2% increase in new cases from October 4 to 31.
New deaths decreased across all countries on average by 35% over the past week, and by 16% on average in October. But three populous countries are struggling with rising numbers of deaths: Nigeria (27%), Egypt (10%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1%).
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also battling an Ebola outbreak in Beni, with fewer than 10 cases but a high death rate.
“The reason we are not seeing an escalation [in Ebola] is that many people were vaccinated previously by the World Health Organization. Most people in that region have had ring vaccinations,” Nkengasong said.
Africa will not beat the Covid-19 pandemic unless it scales up vaccinations to 60%-70% of its 1.2-billion population, Nkengasong said, but cautioned against booster shots for now.
“Boosters are only for the immune compromised and elderly,” he said, recommending a boost for them after six to eight months.
“We want equity, for as many people as possible to be protected, rather than a few people to keep being boosted.”
Asked whether the elections in SA could trigger a spike in new cases, he said: “Each time we offer the virus a chance to spread, it will spread. We are dealing with a virus, especially the Delta variant, that transmits very quickly. I would increase rapid antigen testing to find the hotspots early, rather than wait until they become wildfires.”
Seven countries on the continent are now experiencing their fourth wave and there has been no shift in the distribution of the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants across borders in the past week.
But there was a surge in Covid-19 testing, of 2-million people, bringing the total number of tests done in Africa to 78-million. The positivity rate is still high at 10.8%.
More than 70% of vaccines delivered to the continent have gone into people’s arms: 196.7-million of 278.7-million doses in Africa.
“Overall the coverage still remains low, with about 5.8% of the total population fully immunised,” said Nkengasong, but he is optimistic that the vaccine shipments from AVATT and Covax will continue to pick up during November.
Morocco (60%), Tunisia (30%), Rwanda (23%), Algeria (11%) and Egypt (8%) were making good progress, he said.
Morocco and Rwanda have been named as “centres of excellence”, which will become training centres for other countries on how to vaccinate at scale.
“SA is making an aggressive move to vaccinate,” Africa’s public health chief said. By Wednesday night, 31% of the population was fully inoculated, according to the SA health department.
“Some countries are on a fast track to get to 70%. Some are in the middle, like SA, but we see their numbers increasing and, on the lower side, some countries are really struggling,” Nkengasong noted.
Increase rapid antigen testing to find the hotspots early rather than wait until they become wildfires
— Dr John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC
Fifteen countries have expressed an interest in manufacturing vaccines, including Senegal, Rwanda, SA and Kenya.
On the road this week in Dakar, Senegal — visiting a potential Covid-19 vaccine production site at the Pasteur Institute — Nkengasong said he would visit Eritrea if needed to meet high-level leadership to encourage them to start vaccinations.
Eritrea is the only country not offering vaccinations, after the last outliers of a few months ago, Tanzania and Burundi, joined the rollout.
“We will continue to engage Eritrea and we remain optimistic … we are not giving up until all of Africa is engaged in this fight,” Nkengasong said.
“We are at the bottom of the valley [of infections] and many countries are expected to come up again,” he said.
People tend to lower their guard and stop taking preventive measures such as wearing masks when people stop dying, and then new cases rise quickly from “hotspots nobody knew of”, said Nkengasong.
“We must scale up rapid testing,” he said, announcing that the Africa CDC will be launching a rapid antigen testing campaign for the next six months.
“We must scale up vaccinations and engage communities … so that when the fourth or fifth waves arrive, they are armed and we can blunt it. We have the tools. Let’s use them,” he urged.
