Post by account_disabled on Mar 14, 2024 1:02:37 GMT -5
When the threat of a COVID-19 pandemic emerged earlier this year, many feared its effects on Africa. Concern about the combination of overburdened and underfunded health systems and the already existing burden of infectious and non-infectious diseases meant that it was often talked about in apocalyptic terms. However, that has not been the result. On September 29, the global death toll surpassed one million (the real number will, of course, be higher). That same day, the death toll in Africa reached a cumulative total of 35,954. Africa accounts for 17% of the world's population, but only 3.5% of reported COVID-19 deaths. All deaths are important, we should not discount seemingly low numbers and the data collected is of variable quality, but the gap between predictions and what has actually happened so far is staggering.
There has been much discussion about what causes this gap. As leaders of the COVID-19 team of the African Academy of Sciences, we have followed the development of events and put forward several explanations. In many African countries, transmission has been high, but severity and mortality have been much lower than original AOL Email List predictions, based on the experience of China and Europe. We argue that Africa's much younger population explains a large part of the apparent difference. The remaining part is probably due to a lack of reliable data on what is happening, although there are other plausible explanations: climatic differences, pre-existing immunity, genetic factors or behavioral differences. Given the enormous variability in conditions across the continent, which has 55 states, the exact contribution of any of the factors is likely to change from country to country.
But the bottom line is that what initially seemed like a mystery is now less puzzling as more scientific evidence emerges. The importance of age The most obvious influencing factor in low mortality rates is the age structure of the population. In many countries, the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 80 years and older is approximately one hundred times greater than for people aged 20 years. This is best seen with an example: as of September 30, the United Kingdom had recorded 41,980 deaths from COVID-19, while Kenya had recorded 691. The population of the United Kingdom is about 66 million people, with an average age 40 years old. Kenya's population is 51 million and the median age is 20 years. Taking population size into account, the number of deaths in Kenya would have been estimated at around.
There has been much discussion about what causes this gap. As leaders of the COVID-19 team of the African Academy of Sciences, we have followed the development of events and put forward several explanations. In many African countries, transmission has been high, but severity and mortality have been much lower than original AOL Email List predictions, based on the experience of China and Europe. We argue that Africa's much younger population explains a large part of the apparent difference. The remaining part is probably due to a lack of reliable data on what is happening, although there are other plausible explanations: climatic differences, pre-existing immunity, genetic factors or behavioral differences. Given the enormous variability in conditions across the continent, which has 55 states, the exact contribution of any of the factors is likely to change from country to country.
But the bottom line is that what initially seemed like a mystery is now less puzzling as more scientific evidence emerges. The importance of age The most obvious influencing factor in low mortality rates is the age structure of the population. In many countries, the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 80 years and older is approximately one hundred times greater than for people aged 20 years. This is best seen with an example: as of September 30, the United Kingdom had recorded 41,980 deaths from COVID-19, while Kenya had recorded 691. The population of the United Kingdom is about 66 million people, with an average age 40 years old. Kenya's population is 51 million and the median age is 20 years. Taking population size into account, the number of deaths in Kenya would have been estimated at around.
