Total coronavirus cases in Africa have surpassed the two million mark despite a slow addition of reported infections compared with other regions around the world, the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said. With the African Union’s health body reporting 2,013,388 cases on Thursday, the continent now represents less than 4 percent of the world’s total cases, which many experts believe to be an undercount.
They believe many COVID-19 infections and related deaths in Africa are likely being missed as testing rates in the continent of about 1.3 billion people are among the lowest in the world, and many deaths of all types go unrecorded. Africa has reported less than 48,000 coronavirus deaths so far.
Countries such as Sudan, Chad, and Egypt have reported the highest death rates across the continent at 7.81 percent, 6.28 percent and 5.82 percent respectively. South Africa has the continent’s highest number of reported COVID-19 cases at less than 750,000, with a death rate of 2.71 percent, according to a Reuters tally. With the continent representing nearly 16.7 percent of the world’s population, about 15 coronavirus cases are reported for every 10,000 people.