A continent where the dead are not counted

In the absence of data, experts can make completely different claims.

“Deaths due to COVID-19 on the African continent are not a major public issue,” he said. Dorian Job, Director of the MSF West Africa Program. What he called “crazy expectations” about Covid – the United Nations said that in April Up to 3.3 million Africans will die It, for example – meant harsh lockdowns. Dr Job said the economic and social impacts of these things will be felt in Africa for decades.

But at the other end of the spectrum, researchers just announced that there is a Huge eruption hidden in the capital of Sudan. In the absence of a good death-recording system, they used a molecular, serum, and online survey distributed to Facebook, where people reported their symptoms and whether they had been tested. Researchers estimated that Covid-19 had killed 16,000 people over 477 confirmed deaths by mid-November in Khartoum, which has a population roughly the size of Wisconsin.

Khartoum is just one city on a vast and diverse continent with a variety of approaches to fighting the epidemic. But many of the factors researchers cited about why the number of Covid-19 cases are so underreported – stigma, people unable to undergo testing, and the fact that the response threshold for any disease is high – is true in many African countries.

“Every time someone says, ‘I am very happy Africa has survived,’ my toes are twisted,” said Maysoon Dahab, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kings College London who worked on the Khartoum study.

Mr Agunbiade, the registrar of Lagos, fills out a table every month in which he counts the cause of deaths he has recorded, if known. There are about a dozen categories to choose from. Elderly. malaria. Maternal mortality.

There is no column for Covid-19, although he has sometimes said it is writing off the AIDS / HIV column and the Covid situation. Many Africans may die from Covid-19, but their deaths are misidentified – As far as studies have suggested they were In the early United States epidemic.