According to the director of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the African Union (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, at the institution's weekly press conference, the 55 countries that make up the organization recorded between 14 and 27 October almost 1400 deaths (1393), resulting in a reduction in the rate of spread of the disease by 15 percent, and the number of new infections was 74,595, for a total of 1,715,130, 12 percent more than in the previous week, representing 3 , 9 percent of the world total.
"The time has come to prepare a second wave," said John Nkengasong.
"The continent has been very successful in turning the tide, with most peaks around July and then a steady decline, but now we are starting to see some stagnation," he warned.
Nkengasong stressed that all countries should strengthen testing and surveillance systems and recommend the use of masks.
"If we do this together, we are in fact preparing the continent for a second wave, which will undoubtedly come," he said.
"We see what is happening in Europe. We want to make sure that we preserve what we have achieved in the past 10 months," he added.
In the period under review, the continent recorded more than 1.4 million recoveries, that is, 82 percent of the total cases of infection reported in Africa; and more than 41,000 deaths (41,203), which points to a mortality rate of 2.4 percent.
A set of 13 countries reported mortality rates above the world ratio (2.7 percent): the Sahrawi Arab Republic (7.1 percent), Chad (6.7 percent), Sudan (6.1 percent) percent), Liberia (5.8 percent), Egypt (5.8 percent), Niger (5.7 percent), Mali (3.8 percent), Algeria (3.4 percent percent), Gambia (3.3 percent), Sierra Leone (3.2 percent), Malawi (3.1 percent), Zimbabwe (2.9 percent) and Angola (2.8 percent) .
The North African region recorded most new cases of contagion in the week under review (55 percent), followed by Southern Africa (25 percent), East Africa (16 percent), West Africa (3 percent) and Central (1 percent).
The set of countries with the highest incidence of contagion cases (cases of covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants) includes Libya (110), Cape Verde (107), Morocco (57), Tunisia (49), Botswana (26), Africa South (21) and Namibia (14).
Six countries are the scene of new cases of contagion in the week between 20 and 27 October, led by Morocco (31 percent), South Africa (18 percent), Libya (11 percent), Tunisia (9 percent) ), Kenya (7 percent) and Ethiopia (6 percent).
The number of tests carried out on the continent amounts to more than 17 million and the rate of positive results is in the order of 10.4 percent, which represents an increase of 6.9 percent over the previous week.
The number of deaths in Africa due to covid-19 was in the last 24 hours of 360, now totaling 42,151, while infections have risen to 1,748,335, plus 11,836, according to official data. Africa CDC recorded in the organization's 55 member states 7,216 recovered, for a total of 1,430,558.
