Wife of billionaire philanthropist and co – chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mrs Melinda Gates, has expressed concern over low reported cases of COVID-19 across Africa, saying not having an accurate data, would make the disease difficult to control, and minimize its impact on the African continent.
She observed that COVID – 19 situation in Africa might turn out as bad as the situation in Europe and the United States if not properly handled.
According to the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, there are now 2,807,864 confirmed cases of COVID – 19 across the continent out of a global total of 85,225,353. Number of deaths as at the time of publication, stands at 66,631 out 1,847,507 deaths, and 2,332,063 out 60,275,931 recoveries worldwide.
Speaking to CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Monday about the coronavirus pandemic and the crisis facing countries in Africa, Gates advised African countries to do more to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
She warned that not doing so could lead to a large death toll and lasting effect on the continent.
Gates noted however, that the low number of cases of COVID – 19 in African countries compared to some other parts of the world was because of the limited testing facilities.
Nigeria for example with a population over 200 million people, has recorded 89,163 covid-19 cases so far, and strangely occupies the 9th position among most affected countries in Africa, despite having way more population compared to the nations above it.
The philanthropist stated, “It’s going to be horrible in the developing world. Part of the reasons you are seeing the case numbers still do not look very bad is because they don’t have access to many tests. Look at what is happening in Ecuador, they are putting bodies out on the streets; you are going to see that in countries in Africa.”
She added, “When I saw what China had to do to isolate the enormous part of its population, my first thought was Africa. How in the world are they going to deal with this?
“I have been in townships all over Africa and slums. When we talk about physical distancing and hand – washing, if you live in slums you can’t physically distance, you have to go out and get your meals. You don’t have clean water to wash your hands.”
Her husband, Bill Gates, also expressed doubts over numbers coming out of Africa saying he’s unsure why the numbers are low. He said the world still does not have enough data to understand why COVID-19 numbers have not been as high as predicted in Africa.
The American philanthropist who invests heavily in healthcare in Africa said he is, however, happy to have been wrong about COVID-19 rates in Africa.
“One thing I’m happy to have been wrong about—at least, I hope I was wrong—is my fear that COVID-19 would run rampant in low-income countries,” he wrote in his end of the year note .
So far, this hasn’t been true. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, case rates and death rates remain much lower than in the U.S. or Europe and on par with New Zealand, which has received so much attention for its handling of the virus.
“The hardest-hit country on the continent is South Africa—but even there, the case rate is 40 percent lower than in the U.S., and the death rate is nearly 50 percent lower.”
According to Gates, “more than 1.6 million people have died in the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 75 million cases and tens of trillions of dollars in economic damages”.
The US has been the hardest-hit country in the world — while South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, has been the most affected in Africa.
Bill Gates had warned early 2020 that Africa could be the worse hit by COVID-19, stating at a conference that the virus would overwhelm health systems in the world’s poorest continent.
Bill Gates said, “we don’t have enough data yet to understand why the numbers aren’t as high as I worried they would get” — but gave probable reasons Africa was not as affected as expected.
It helped that some countries locked down early. In Africa, another reason may be that the population is young compared with the rest of the world’s, and young people are less susceptible to the virus.
“Another reason could be that its large rural population spends a lot of time outside, where it’s harder to spread the virus. It is also possible—though I hope this is not the case—that the true numbers are higher than they look because gaps in poor countries’ health care systems are making it hard to monitor the disease accurately.”
