The scourging impact of the coronavirus pandemic is still being felt in most parts of the world as countries continues to seek for ways to bring a lasting solution to the dreaded disease.
Although there has been a number measures put in place to curb the spread of the virus through implementation of health guidelines and the roll out of vaccines, many countries are still grappling with the effect of the pandemic on their socio economic lives especially in Africa.
According to onlinelibrary.wiley.com, six African countries account for 53.7% of active coronavirus cases in the continent till date, with North African countries having the highest number of cases.
These countries are Algeria (32,157), Egypt (31,489), South Africa (29,516), Tunisia (27,104), Ethiopia (25,209) and Uganda (25,065).
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As the COVID‐19 pandemic accelerated, socioeconomic damage was increasing in Africa and all over the world. However, the curve of the pandemic within and outside the continent is flattening gradually in some individual countries while rising in others.
Accordingly, as of 7 March 2021, about a year after the first coronavirus was detected in Africa, the total number of confirmed COVID‐19 cases had reached 116,830,061 globally, the majority of which (30.2%) occurred in Europe, followed by North America (28.6%), Asia (21.9%), South America (15.9%) and Africa (3,964,055 or 3.4%). It must be noted that though Africa’s reported confirmed cases are the lowest globally, testing has been extremely low in the continent.
From a regional perspective, confirmed cases were highest in Southern Africa (47.4%), followed by North Africa (29.8%), West Africa (10.13%), East Africa (10.12%), and central Africa (2.6%) On a country basis, 78.7% of confirmed cases were in nine countries, namely South Africa (38.4%), Morocco (12.3%), Tunisia (6.0%), Egypt (4.7%), Ethiopia (4.2%), Nigeria (4.0%), Libya (3.5%), Algeria (2.9%) and Kenya (2.7%).
The number of global active cases reached 40,250,009 as of 7 March 2021 against Africa’s 317,794. Active cases in Africa showed a downward trend from the end of December 2020.
From a regional perspective, North Africa accounted for 33.6% of active cases in Africa, followed by East Africa (27.7%), Southern Africa (23.3%), West Africa (12.2%), and Central Africa (3.2%). On a country basis, six countries account for 53.7% of the active cases in Africa as of this date.
