The World Health Organization has cautioned countries to consider the risks involved in the reopening of economies and the resume of social life due to the significant dropping off the new COVID-19 cases in the continent.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa made the passionate appeal at a virtual briefing, stressing that it is important, countries resume their economic activities to surmount hardships thus advocating for Contact tracing as a key strategy for curbing the spread of the virus and possibly reduce mortality.
According to her, findings have shown that by 15 March 2022, 13 countries were conducting comprehensive surveillance, while 19 countries were carrying out prioritized contact tracing, as about Twenty-two African countries were no longer carrying out any kind of contact tracing, adding that stringent measures need to be taken by country leaders to accelerate progress.
“It is a matter of concern that nearly half of all countries in Africa have stopped tracing the contacts of cases.
This, along with robust testing, is the backbone of any pandemic response. Without this critical information, it is difficult to track the spread of the virus and identify new COVID-19 hotspots that may be caused by known or emerging variants.
Aside from contact tracing, testing is a critical surveillance strategy. The WHO benchmark for countries with a good testing rate is 10 tests per 10 000 population per week. In the first quarter of 2022, only 27% of countries were achieving this weekly target, indicating a concerning decrease in testing rates compared with 2021, when 40% of countries reached the benchmark. Aside from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and antigen rapid diagnostic tests.”
She added that self-testing using antigen-detection rapid tests to expand access to diagnostics as recommended by WHO is key to the pandemic’s total eradication.
“While COVID-19 cases have declined across the continent since the peak of the Omicron-driven fourth wave in early January 2022, vaccination coverage remains far behind the rest of the world. About 201 million people or 15.6% of the population are fully vaccinated compared with the global average of 57%.”
WHO is therefore appealing to countries to observe the requirement of wearing masks as the pandemic isn’t over yet hence the preventive measures recommended by health authorities could contain the possible spread of the virus.
It further urged Countries to take into consideration the capacity of health systems, the immunity of the population to COVID-19, and the countries’ socio-economic priorities, thus putting in place a quick response mechanism to closely monitor the infection trends, allow timely detection and treatment as well as swiftly respond to the emergence of new variants of concern.
