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JOHANNESBURG – In Uganda, hospitals are becoming so overwhelmed with cases of the novel coronavirus that patients are dying while waiting to get a bed. In Namibia, all non-emergency surgeries have been canceled to conserve space for Covid-19 patients and military hospitals have opened for civilian use. In Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, intensive care wards are filling up and hospitals are stocking up on oxygen cylinders as infections escalate again.
Across Africa, which has received fewer Covid-19 vaccines than any other continent, countries are facing a new wave of coronavirus infections without the vaccinations that turned the tide of the epidemic in Europe and North America.
The news that the Group of Seven will donate at least one billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to poor countries holds promise for some relief on a continent where 0.6% of 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
However, donated shots – most of which won’t start arriving until August or later – may not prevent many African governments from running out of shots in the coming weeks as deliveries from the WHO-backed Covax program to developing countries have slowed to Drop.
Meanwhile, new, more transmissible variants of the virus are taking root in many African nations, compounding their struggle to recover from the continent’s worst recession ever.
The donated shots will help inoculate millions of doctors and nurses who work in some of the world’s weakest healthcare systems, often treating Covid-19 patients without the protection their colleagues received elsewhere for months. Health officials say millions of additional doses are needed to vaccinate the general population and end the pandemic.
A shipment of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from the Covax Program arrived at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda in March. Photo: Hegra Nolouda / Zuma Pressطبعة
“The continent is going through a third wave, there is no doubt about that,” said John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All countries … must arm themselves with treatment facilities. This includes the availability of oxygen and other processing-related goods.”
Dr Nkengasong said the number of cases is on the rise in 14 out of 54 countries in Africa, up 26% in the first week of June, compared to the previous seven days. The new outbreaks are located in national capitals, where there is often a greater capacity to register cases. The situation in towns and villages is still largely unknown.
Kinshasa, a mega-city of about 11 million people and the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is under a curfew after the World Health Organization detected a massive rise in the number of cases in May. “Not only do we feel disoriented, but sometimes we are without water, electricity, oxygen or even beds,” said Augustin Mulumba, a doctor who works in the Covid-19 ward at Hôpital du Cinquantenaire, a large private hospital in Kinshasa.
Daily infections in South Africa’s most populous province of Gauteng, home to its political and economic capitals, Pretoria and Johannesburg, have nearly doubled over the past week. Epidemiologists warn that cities may set a record for deaths later this month.
Covid-19 patients have to wait up to five days for a place in the intensive care unit while beds in other wards fill up quickly, said a doctor working there at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg. At Chris Hani Paragwanath Hospital, another large general hospital in Johannesburg, doctors from other departments are moved to the Covid-19 ward to help deal with the influx of patients.
The director of the CDC in Africa and head of the UK’s Covid-19 genomics division told WSJ Betsy McKay that a lack of knowledge about Covid-19 and problems with vaccine distribution could lead to more and stronger variants in the future.
Concerned about its faltering economy, the South African government has been reluctant to impose a new lockdown, with indoor dining and gatherings of up to 100 people allowed.
According to official data, infections in Africa are still only a small part of the number of global cases. But limited testing capabilities and widespread reluctance to seek hospital help even during severe illness mean that the true scale of the epidemic on the continent remains difficult to assess.
Some doctors and health officials in the worst-affected countries say this new increase in infections appears to be more serious than its predecessors. “This new wave is more deadly, with more young people getting infected,” said Medard Rotaru, a surgeon at Mulago Hospital in Uganda. “This is no longer a disease of the elderly.”
The East African country of 42 million people more than doubled for the second week in a row, to 1,144 coronavirus cases, as infections clustered among health care workers and school and university students, mostly in the capital, Kampala. President Yoweri Museveni announced a new lockdown on Sunday, closing schools for six weeks and banning most gatherings, warning that “the severity of COVID-19 patients with critical illness and deaths is much higher in this wave”.
Daily infections in the southern African country that includes Johannesburg have nearly doubled over the past week; A woman got a Covid-19 vaccine out of town last month. Photo: siphiwe sibeko/Reuters
At Mulago Hospital, Uganda’s largest streams of ambulances, they transport critically ill patients in need of oxygen. With intensive care units full, patients are forced to sleep on the hospital grounds. Doctors here say they have found a marked rise in the number of severe cases among young adults.
Uganda had only received a third of the three million vaccines the Kovacs program was supposed to provide by the end of May. Covax is no longer receiving shots from its main supplier in India due to an export ban imposed by the government in New Delhi, but says it is working to close a gap of about 250 million vaccine doses by the end of September through donated shots and deals with other manufacturers. About 4,000 Chinese vaccines arrived in December, but they have only been given to Ugandan government officials and Chinese diaspora workers.
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Public health officials are also concerned about the emergence of the Delta type, a strain first discovered in India. Early data from the UK indicates that the variant is 40% to 80% more transmissible than the alpha variant currently prevalent in Europe and the US.
Its prevalence is increasing in Kampala and Kinshasa, but has been discovered in small numbers only in South Africa. Dr Nkengasong said the very limited genome sequencing, used to identify variants, in most African countries makes it difficult to understand if it is driving some of the current increases.
The current wave in Africa is set to exacerbate the historic divergence between the economies of the world’s richest and poorest countries.
According to the Pew Research Center, the continent’s middle class, which is the main driver of economic, educational and political development, is shrinking rapidly, both because it is unvaccinated and without the help of large government stimulus measures. It hardly waned in the US and China.
Covid-19 in Africa
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The latest wave will be even more devastating, said Leonard Chipkoni, a 53-year-old travel and tour operator from Nairobi, whose business has been dormant since the pandemic shut down the tourism industry.
“We were hoping to get back on our feet again,” said Mr. Chipkwony. ‘Many companies in tourism are closer to the cliff of total failure.’
Of the 2.2 billion vaccines administered globally, fewer than 36 million have been administered in Africa, according to the Africa Center for Disease Control. Three African countries – Tanzania, Burundi and Eritrea – have not fed anyone. Without an increase in supplies, only seven countries in the WHO Africa region will have vaccinated 10% of their populations by the end of September, said Machidiso Moeti, the agency’s regional director.
In Seychelles, the most vaccinated country in Africa, there has been a resurgence of cases, likely due to new variants and the relatively low efficacy of Sinopharm.
Families in Uganda are already calculating the cost. Susan Poole tried to find a place for her mother with Covid in every intensive care unit in Kampala, but there were no beds available. Her mother passed away on Monday. “They were all full of Covid-19 patients,” Ms Buwule said. Doctors believe she would have survived if she had found a bed.
– Ayesha Dadi Patel contributed to this article.
Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected], Nicholas Bariyo at [email protected] and Joe Parkinson at [email protected]
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