The COVID-19 pandemic could kill 150,000 people in Africa over the next year unless urgent action is taken, according to authors of a WHO modeling study, which found that nearly a quarter of a billion people would become infected.
The authors of the research, published yesterday in the journal BMJ Global Health, predicted a lower infection rate than in other parts of the world, such as Europe and the US, with fewer severe cases and deaths.
However, while many African nations have been swift to adopt containment measures, healthcare systems could still quickly become overwhelmed, they said.
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“Our model points to the scale of the problem for healthcare systems if containment measures fail,” the authors said.
The study comes amid stark warnings that COVID-19 threatens a health emergency in developing nations, where fragile healthcare systems have been struggling with an array of other chronic diseases.
Experts at the WHO’s Africa office modeled likely rates of exposure to the virus and infection in the 47 countries under its regional remit, which excludes Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
About 231 million people, or 22 percent (with a range of 16 to 26 percent) of the 1 billion people in the region are expected to become infected in the 12 month period. Most would show few or no symptoms, but an estimated 4.6 million people would need to be hospitalized, while 140,000 would have severe COVID-19 infection and 89,000 would become critically ill.
That would lead to about 150,000 deaths (from 83,000 to 190,000), the study said.
The modeling estimates what would happen for each country over the period of a year from the beginning of widespread and sustained community transmission.
Researchers said that surging hospital admissions for COVID-19 would divert limited resources from tackling major health issues in the region, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition, worsening the effects of the pandemic.
“The region will have fewer deaths, but they will occur more in relatively younger age groups, among people previously considered healthy — due to undiagnosed noncommunicable diseases,” the report said, adding that these trends have started.
The researchers said they expect that the virus would likely circulate within the region for longer than in other countries, possibly over several years.
They called for countries to rapidly boost healthcare capacity, particularly in primary hospitals.
The UN this month said that the number of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa could double if the provision of healthcare to those with HIV is disrupted during the coronavirus crisis.
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