Scientists mystified, wary, as Africa avoids COVID-19 disaster
Harare: At a busy market in a poor township outside Harare this week, Nyasha Ndou kept his mask in his pocket, as hundreds of other people, mostly unmasked, jostled to buy and sell fruit and vegetables displayed on wooden tables and plastic sheets. As in much of Zimbabwe, here the Coronavirus is quickly being relegated to the past, as political rallies, concerts and home gatherings have returned.
Earlier this week, Zimbabwe recorded just 33 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths, in line with a recent fall in the disease across the continent, where World Health Organization data show that infections have been dropping since July.
When the Coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. Although it's still unclear what COVID-19's ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of the continent.
Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is extremely difficult, and warn that declining Coronavirus trends could easily be reversed.
But there is something mysterious going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University.
Africa doesn't have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the US, but somehow they seem to be doing better, she said. Fewer than 6 per cent of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as one of the least affected regions in the world in its weekly pandemic reports.
Some researchers say the continent's younger population -- the average age is 20 versus about 43 in Western Europe in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared it the more lethal effects of the virus so far. Several studies are probing whether there might be other explanations, including genetic reasons or exposure to other diseases.
Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer's University in Nigeria, said authorities are used to curbing outbreaks even without vaccines and credited the extensive networks of community
health workers.
