A healthcare professional being vaccinated against COVID-19 on March 10, 2021 in Kampala, Uganda. The most at-risk populations, front-line health workers, teachers and the elderly, were first vaccinated.CREDIT: Luke Dray/Getty Images
A new study has identified predictors of the timing of the first case and the mortality rate in the WHO African Region during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study found the proportion of urban population, volume of pre-pandemic international air travel, number of international airports, and prevalence of HIV/AIDS were risk factors for per capita mortality rate. Countries with more borders also registered their first cases earlier than island nations.
Feifei Zhang from the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK, and researchers from Africa found that, contrary to expectations, countries that were thought to have better healthcare systems and better prepared were more vulnerable to the pandemic.
Karamagi Humphrey, one of the co-authors and Senior Technical Officer in Health Systems Development at the WHO Regional office for Africa says we have seen different patterns of transmission, and deaths across countries, within countries and over time in the same communities. This suggests there are other issues driving the pandemic, beyond how infectious or severe the virus is”.
The researchers tried to account for the widespread under-reporting of COVID-19 deaths, but acknowledged limitations in data availability that caused them to omit certain African states from the study.
“Gaining an understanding of variation in the progression of the pandemic in different countries will aid the response to future pandemics. Current evidence from high- and middle-income countries suggest that demographics, co-morbidities, healthcare resources, and stringency of response are important risk factors for COVID-19-related infections,” the researchers write.
