Africa CDC urges countries to test and vaccine at scale

Even as Africa continues to report decreases in new COVID-19 cases, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged countries across the continent to scale up testing and vaccination to blunt the arrival of the fourth and fifth waves.

"The decrease in new cases has stabilized to around 4 percent. We seem to have gone down very quickly. However, we should be very careful and avoid complacency because already nine countries have gone into the fourth wave," Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong said.

To scale up testing, he urged countries to engage community members through community health workers to carry out rapid testing.

"If we keep rapid tests only on the level of laboratory, it will be difficult to scale up testing. Let's learn lessons from HIV/Aids to expand the tests," Nkengasong said.

Currently, 34 African Union member states are experiencing a more severe third wave and four others are experiencing a severe fourth wave.

Nkengasong warned a fourth wave may be inevitable to countries experiencing a third wave if they don't follow recommendations for testing, vaccination and observation of public and social health measures.

Additionally, with the Christmas and New Year festivities around the corner, a time when people travel to rural areas or holiday destinations for get-togethers and celebrations, there are fears cases may surge.

Nkengasong urged countries to start preparing during this period of downtime, through massive testing to quickly uncover hotspots and micro-lockdowns.

The move would help in intensifying community engagement in the areas and implementing public health and social measures instead of waiting until the situation burst into a fourth or fifth wave followed by a national lockdown.

Nkengasong said countries should also vaccinate community members aggressively.

"More vaccines are now coming into the continent and efforts should be made to increase uptake so people already have vaccines when another wave comes," he said.

Nkengasong warned community members against waiting to rush for vaccination when another wave hits and infections surge, noting vaccines take four weeks to start producing antibodies.

To date, only 6 percent of Africa's population has been fully vaccinated, an indication COVID-19 is still a real threat to the continent's population.

Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Algeria and Tunisia have administered the highest number of COVID-19 vaccines in the continent. Notably Morocco, Egypt and South Africa have administered over 20 million doses.

Of all AU member states, Eritrea is yet to start administering COVID-19 vaccines.

Between Nov 1 and 7, Africa reported a total of 31,474 new cases, translating to a 4 percent decrease from the previous week, African CDC data indicates.

During the same period, the continent reported 1,133 new deaths, representing a 14 percent decrease from the previous week.

Egypt and Botswana reported the highest number of new cases at 6,468 and 6,168 respectively. They were followed by Libya and Ethiopia, with 3,745 and 2,043 respectively.

Egypt, Somalia and Sudan are reporting a case fatality rate higher than 5 percent. The global average case fatality rate is 2 percent.

On Thursday, Benido Impouma, director of communicable and non-communicable diseases at the WHO regional office for Africa, said Congo-Brazzaville, Mauritius and Egypt are trending upward in terms of new COVID-19 cases.

"With these flare-ups, this is no time to sit back and relax. We must do everything possible to prevent COVID-19 from gaining the upper hand," he said.

So far, Africa has reported a total of over 8.5 million COVID-19 infection cases and more than 220,000 deaths, accounting for 3.5 percent of total infection cases and 4.4 percent of deaths reported globally.