Report from Kenya #632 -- Update on Covid-19 in Eastern Africa
David Zarembka
Update on Covid-19 in Eastern Africa
Report from Kenya #632 – November 27, 2020
If you want the URL for this report, contact me at davidz...@gmail.com
Chart of cases in Eastern African countries per million of population. Kenya, orange line; Uganda, blue line; Ethiopia, brown line; Rwanda, green line; South Sudan, light blue line; Somalia, violet line; and Burundi, red line.
It has been six months since I gave overviews of the Covid-19 situation in Eastern Africa. Therefore it is time for an update.
This chart shows the situation in each country on November 26. I have also included the world average, the United States, and United Kingdom for comparison. If you compare the numbers on the chart, you can see that all the eastern Africa countries are doing significantly better than the world average, the United States, or United Kingdom in both number of cases and number of deaths per million.
I will cover these eight countries from the worst to best.
Tanzania: (no line on chart). Tanzania has declared that the country is virus free and in order not to make people panic the country has stopped reporting any Covid-19 cases or deaths to WHO or the John Hopkins University tally. Consequently there is no way to make any kind of assessment of the situation in Tanzania.
Kenya: (orange line in chart with 1,477 cases and 26 deaths per million). The chart indicates that Kenya had a first peak of infections at the beginning of August. Strict restrictions were then placed on the country and the rate declined below the 5% rate of people testing positive considered by WHO to be when the virus is contained. Most restrictions were then removed and Kenyans more or less returned to “normal.” This resulted in a second wave which is already higher than the first way. Some restrictions have been re-imposed, but it is not yet clear if these will be sufficient to contain the virus. The small downturn in the chart may be partly due to less testing.
Ethiopia: (brown line with 927 cases and 14 deaths per million). Ethiopia had a peak near the end of August and has been able to keep the virus mostly under control since then. But just last week a civil war has broken out in Ethiopia. Besides the death and destruction from the fighting, it is not clear how this is going to effect the containment of the virus.
Rwanda: (green line with 447 cases and 4 deaths per million). Rwanda, which responded quickly to the virus, had a first wave which was somewhat smaller than Kenya and Ethiopia. Although Rwanda has so far been able to avoid a second wave, there has recently been a small uptick in cases and this may be the start of a second wave. Most restrictions in Rwanda are still in place.
Uganda: (blue line with 413 cases and 4 deaths per million). At the beginning of the epidemic, Uganda placed severe restrictions on the population and this has resulted in no real first wave as other countries have had, but some restrictions have been lifted and this has resulted in an increase in cases in the last month. At this point it is unclear if this increase will continue or be contained.
Somalia: (violet line with 277 cases and 7 deaths per million). While Somalia’s case and death load are low, the Somali government does not have control of much of the territory of the country. In particular it is unclear what the situation is in the rural areas. Therefore this must be considered minimal rates based on the cities that the government does control. On the other hand, Somalia, because of its insecurity, has been an isolated country which probably has hindered the spread of the disease.
South Sudan: (light blue line with 275 cases and 5 deaths per million). In many ways South Sudan mirrors the situation in Somalia. The government is weak and does not have access to many of the rural areas. Again like Somalia due to insecurity, there is not a lot of travel that leads to the spread of the disease.
Burundi: (red line with 56 cases and 0.08 deaths per million). When the virus struck at the beginning of this year, Burundi was under sanctions and there was very little international travel. Some of its borders, such as with Rwanda, were already closed and the country quickly closed its airport and rest of the borders. The virus was thus very late in spreading to Burundi. This has kept its rate down.
Another interesting aspect is that, when taking the number of people who die divided by the number of people who have had the disease, the death rate is rather low. For the seven eastern Africa countries, the rate is 1.6 per cent. In the United States, the rate is 2.1 per cent and for the United Kingdom 3.6 per cent. This is in spite of the fact that the medical facilities to care for serious ill patients is much better in the US and UK than in eastern Africa.
In summary, eastern Africa as a whole is doing decently well. At this point it is only Kenya where the virus seems to have gotten out of control. Nonetheless the rate of infection and the rate of death even in Kenya are much lower than the world averages of 7,863 cases per million and 184 deaths per million of population.
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David Zarembka
Email: davidz...@gmail.com
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