Sierra Leone's KAMAKWIE — There's no need to be afraid about Covid here.
Since the outbreak began, the district's Covid-19 response center has only recorded 11 cases and no deaths. The wards at the regional hospital are overflowing with malaria victims. The weed-infested door to the Covid isolation ward is fastened shut. There are no masks in sight at weddings, soccer matches, or concerts when people cram together.
Sierra Leone, a country of eight million people on the coast of Western Africa, feels like a land that was miraculously spared from a plague. What has happened — or hasn't happened — in this country and most of Sub-Saharan Africa is a huge pandemic riddle.
The low number of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in West and Central Africa has sparked a discussion among scientists on the continent and elsewhere. Have the ill and deceased gone uncounted? Why has Covid done less harm here if he has done less damage elsewhere? How could we have missed it if it had been just as vicious?
In an interview in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, Austin Demby, the country's health minister, said the responses "are relevant not just to us, but have consequences for the wider public welfare."
The claim that Covid isn't as serious a threat in Africa has spurred controversy over whether the African Union's plan to vaccinate 70% of Africans against the virus this year is the wisest use of health-care resources, given the destruction caused by other viruses like malaria.
In the early months of the pandemic, there was concern that Covid might annihilate Africa, ripping through countries with health systems as weak as Sierra Leone's, where the World Health Organization estimates that there are only three doctors for every 100,000 people. Malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB, and hunger were all viewed as potential disasters.
This has not occurred. The first incarnation of the virus, which spread over the globe, had a negligible influence in this country. While the Beta strain, as well as Delta and Omicron, wreaked havoc in South Africa, the remainder of the continent was spared.
As the outbreak enters its third year, fresh data demonstrates that there is no longer any doubt that Covid has spread far across Africa. Yes, it has.
Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the formal name for the virus that causes Covid, have been found in around two-thirds of the population in most Sub-Saharan African nations, according to studies. Because just 14% of the population has had any form of Covid vaccine, the antibodies are almost entirely from infection.
