{"id":262589,"date":"2020-09-25T17:10:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=262589"},"modified":"2020-09-25T17:11:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:11:02","slug":"reasons-africa-escaped-exponential-rise-in-covid-19-cases-%e2%80%95-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=262589","title":{"rendered":"Reasons Africa escaped ‘exponential’ rise in COVID-19 cases \u2015 WHO"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"COVID-19:<\/p>\n

Africa has escaped the \u201cexponential\u201d rise in coronavirus cases seen elsewhere probably due to low population density and a hot and humid climate, the UN health agency said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Africa recorded 34,706 deaths from 1,439,657 COVID-19 cases, according to an AFP tally on Friday \u2014 far behind the other continents. The United States alone has 202,827 deaths from 6,979,937 cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe transmission of Covid-19 in Africa was marked by relatively fewer infections which have subsided in the last two months,\u201d the World Health Organization said in a statement in French from its regional office in the Congo capital Brazzaville.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last four weeks 77,147 new cases were recorded against 131,647 in the four preceding weeks,\u201d said the statement, received by AFP on Friday.<\/p>\n

WHO said some of the worst-hit countries such as Algeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa had seen infections steadily fall in the past two months.<\/p>\n

South Africa is the continent\u2019s worst-affected country. According to the latest official statistics on Friday, there 667,049 cases of which 16,283 were fatal.<\/p>\n

The WHO said the \u201clow population density, the hot and humid climate, the high level and the high percentage of youths combined\u201d to probably contribute to the low infection rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround 91 per cent of the infections in sub-Saharan Africa concerned people less than 60 and over 80 per cent of these cases were asymptomatic,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The decline is a testimony to the decisive public health measures taken by all the governments in the region, the WHO\u2019s Africa director Matshidiso Moeti said during a virtual meeting on Thursday.<\/p>\n

South Africa, the continent\u2019s most industrialised economy, shuttered its borders at the start of a strict nationwide lockdown on March 27 to limit the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n

Restrictions on movement and business have been gradually eased since June, but borders stayed sealed to avoid importing the virus from abroad.<\/p>\n

[AFP]<\/p>\n

Vanguard News Nigeria.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa has escaped the \u201cexponential\u201d rise in coronavirus cases seen elsewhere probably due to low population density and a hot and humid climate, the UN health agency said. Africa recorded 34,706 deaths from 1,439,657 COVID-19 cases, according to an AFP tally on Friday \u2014 far behind the other continents. The United States alone has 202,827 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":262590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14571,3],"tags":[94,14173,1147,1968],"class_list":["post-262589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-news","tag-africa","tag-coronavirus","tag-unicef","tag-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/262590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}