Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | There is a 15 percent reduction in new COVID-19 infections in Africa, the Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said during a meeting held to discuss how Africa Economies can safely open up amidst the pandemic.
In the meeting held today, Wednesday, Dr Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, the Deputy Director of the Africa CDC said that although this is good news in terms of averages, the picture is still grim on a country by country analysis is done.
Dr Ogwell said 31 of the countries in Africa have less than 5,000 cases and only one country has a total of above 100,000 positive cases with South Africa heading to half a million cases. He said the strides made in keeping infections generally low have been due to the fact that they have been able to test people surpassing their own set targets.
At a meeting in Addis Ababa earlier in March when only a few cases had been recorded in Africa following the first case on the continent in Egypt in February, African health ministers set to have conducted 10 million tests by October.
Ouma says they have since surpassed this target and linked those that have tested positive to necessary care in addition to tracing their contacts.
A new target for tests has been made and the plan is to have tested 20 million people by end of October. When asked whether it’s safe to open up economies, Ouma said that Africa cannot be closed forever saying that countries that have put in place public measures can open up.
Already, he said, 27 countries on the continent have allowed cross border movement but they require a negative test for one to be able to enter a specific country. He said more discussions are still going on among member states on how they can make it easy to travel through Africa with complaints of closure of airports piling.
At the meeting, Barry Kashambo, the International Civil Aviation Organization regional director of the Eastern and Southern Africa Office called for a strategic approach by African governments to recover from COVID-19 saying that the constant travel advisories being issued are not hurting foreign but domestic domestic tourism in Africa too yet it’s essential for the continent’s growth.
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