Image
On February 27, 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa reported its first case of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The patient was an Italian man living in Nigeria, who had just returned from Milan in Italy, which was then a cluster for the disease in Europe. Shortly after the patient was identified, a sample of the virus was sent to a small town called Ede, located in Osun State, southwestern Nigeria, over 200 kilometers away from Lagos. There, a team led by Professor Christian Happi, analyzed the sample and was able within 48 hours to share the very first genome sequence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from Africa with the global science community faster than what was being done in some developed countries and, more importantly, much faster than sending it to a laboratory overseas.
CHINESE GOVT DONATES MEDICAL SUPPLIES WORTH 1 2 MILLION RMB TO COVID RESPONSE zambiareports.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from zambiareports.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
That figure represents a big rise from the 3,117 recorded over the same period in 2019.
Now Zambian health officials are grappling with a wave of dead-on-arrival cases at the country’s main referral hospital.
The spike in cases may be related to residents not following Covid-19 guidelines, as well as to widespread misconceptions about the virus.
“We have recorded an increase in the number of Brought-In-Dead (BID) cases,” says Professor Lloyd Mulenga, Director of infectious diseases at Zambia’s Health Ministry.
According to Professor Mulenga, UTH recorded 4,339 BID cases from early June to early November as compared to 3,711 in the same period in 2019.
Lusaka Province Minister Bowman Lusambo yesterday morning distributed masks and sensitizing motorists and some Lusaka residents on the importance of adhering to Covid-19 health guidelines.
Mr. Lusambo has since directed that he will tomorrow start taking stringent measures against those that will not comply with the Statutory Instruments (SIs) on Covid-19.
The Minister, who led members of the multi-sectoral Covid-19 taskforce on an inspection of compliance to health regulation among motorists and other road users at Arcades Flyover Bridge, Heroes stadium bus stop, and shop owners at Manda Hill shopping mall, observed that there is complacency among residents despite the increasing cases of the disease in the province.
New research in Zambia’s capital city challenges the common belief that Africa somehow “dodged” the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study in Lusaka, Zambia last summer finds that as many as 19% of recently deceased people tested positive for COVID-19.
“Our findings cast doubt on the assumption that COVID-19 somehow skipped Africa…”
The findings indicate that low numbers of reported infections and deaths across Africa may simply be from lack of testing, with the coronavirus taking a terrible but invisible toll on the continent.
Available on medRxiv ahead of peer-reviewed publication, the study finds that at least 15% and as many as 19% of recently deceased people arriving at Lusaka’s main morgue over the summer had the coronavirus, peaking at 31% in July. Despite most having had COVID symptoms, few were tested before death.