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A race against time: Countries that aren’t able to vaccinate at least 60% of their populations by mid-2022 may have GDP losses totalling $2.3 trillion between 2022 and 2025, per the Economist Intelligence Unit. South Africa and Morocco are the only African countries on track to reach this threshold by mid-2022, with the bulk of countries meeting that goal in 2023 and beyond. Consequently, sub-Saharan African nations will likely shoulder a 3% loss relative to the region’s GDP,...
Aftershocks
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Shocking symbol: Europe is set to receive millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses produced in South Africa. Up to 10 million Johnson & Johnson shots partially produced by South African manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare are to be exported to Europe in August and September, and millions more were exported in recent months. Meanwhile, South Africa is yet to receive the overwhelming majority of the 31 million J&J doses it ordered from the company, a key reason why only 7% of...
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Overwhelmed: Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Africa have ticked over 7 million, as the virus continues to rip through the continent’s largely unvaccinated population. In Zimbabwe, record numbers of deaths from the virus have led to widespread delays in burials. Undertakers are struggling to cope with the added pressure, and bereaved family members are waiting days for a burial slot. In Senegal, hospitals are quickly becoming overwhelmed: 90% of calls to the country’s emergency paramedic service are currently...
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Surging: Deaths from COVID-19 in Africa are surging, with the average daily number of confirmed deaths ticking past 1,000 for the first time since the pandemic began. Confirmed deaths from the virus have increased by 80% in the past four weeks, driven by the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. In Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city, six people are dying per day and the positivity rate of those being tested has increased eightfold in the last month....
A roundup of the latest news, stats, and analysis of COVID-19’s impact in Africa. View our data tracker and sign up for our weekly newsletter, and read on for the impact of the pandemic on global education, Africa’s record COVID-19 death rate, and warnings of an impending “orphan crisis.”
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COVID-19 updates
Grim milestone: This week, Africa’s daily death COVID-19 rate tipped over the peak reached in January. ONE’s COVID-19 Africa Tracker shows that in the week to 26 July, more...
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Destructive pathway: COVID-19 infections in Africa are increasing at their fastest rate ever, with over 1 million confirmed cases recorded in the past month alone. The situation in at least 18 African countries is dire, as chronic shortages of vaccines leave millions exposed to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. With only 1.4% of the continent’s population fully vaccinated, daily confirmed COVID-19 deaths have more than doubled in the past month and are currently sitting just...
As COVID-19 spreads across low- and middle-income countries, billions of people are vulnerable to variants that could resist vaccines and put the world back at square one in tackling this pandemic.
So why isn’t the vaccine already available to everyone, everywhere? It comes down to supply and distribution. Rich countries have bought up the majority of the supply and are hoarding even what they don’t need. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income countries are struggling to roll out the doses they do...
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Fallout of COVID-19 pandemic causes spike in world hunger
Critical juncture: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic worsening of world hunger – in 2020, just under 10% of the global population was undernourished, up from 8.4% in 2019. A UN report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world found that Africa saw the sharpest rise – at 21% of the population, Africa’s rate of undernourishment is more than double that of any other region...
Rasna Warah is a Kenyan writer and journalist who is working with the ONE Campaign’s COVID-19 Aftershocks project.
EU countries will issue a COVID-19 vaccine certificate that excludes key vaccines distributed through the COVAX facility – which is financed by many of the same countries – placing Africans at a unique disadvantage.
Africans who have expressed concern over the extremely stringent and punitive visa application procedures of EU countries now have to contend with another barrier to their entry to Europe....
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Africa’s worst week since the pandemic started
Nothing we have seen before: This week was Africa’s worst since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Confirmed cases across the continent surged past the previous peak. Infections are now rising by 25% every week. The WHO’s Africa Director, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said, “the speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we have seen before.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the country’s health system is “buckling” as...