Is Africa making good progress in containing and eventually defeating the COVID-19 pandemic as countries begin lifting restrictions?

Is Africa making good progress in containing and eventually defeating the COVID-19 pandemic as countries begin lifting restrictions?

So far, the picture is not clear and much more needs to be done to safely open up economies and societies.

Before African leaders engage in a mad rush to reopen all facets of society and economy, they should sufficiently assess their local and regional conditions and consider a few issues, else any negative effect of their decisions will be considered a reckless abandon, and haunt them into eternity, not only political oblivion. This reopening of economy and society comes at the time of rising positive cases of the virus on the continent, even if at a slower rate than experienced elsewhere. Except African leaders want to pursue herd immunity, for which preliminary results from elsewhere would suggest that to reach 60-70% of the population contracting the virus will be at the expense of several fold deaths than currently registered in the region.

Africa COVID - 19 Response Update

Thanks all for your thoughts and encouragement. I'm yet to see an African data source that provides a good breakdown of COVID-19 cases to guide personal, community, state or global decision making. In this piece, there's also a request to know which entity is modeling or projecting the trend that COVID-19 may take in Africa.

The official COVID-19 Web site for a particular country may have an entry pertaining to "general surveillance," but no idea of the place surveilled, the sample size and other demographics of the area, period of surveillance, proportion of negative cases compare to positive cases, etc. Johns Hopkins University has become a global resource to many on tracking the virus, including Africa: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-4a11d568-2716-41cf-a15e-7d15079548bc> We have been told that majority of the initial cases in Africa were imports, but since then, what's the degree of community spread?

Africa in lockdown over COVID-19

Should the entire continent of Africa be in synchronized lockdown over the COVID-19 pandemic? That should be a matter of great concern, instead of narrow country-by-country actions.

In discussing this issue, some have suggested that those entrusted with keeping the keys or codes to the lock may not remember to unlock the region or even the security code when it was time to reopen, given the extremely weak institutional environment and memory across much of the region. To counter, there are suggestions to hand over the locks and security codes to the International Monetary Fund as the ultimate whip and disciplinarian.

Africa needs effective continent-wide and predictable mechanism on COVID-19 (2)

Africa has been the 'last frontier' in many issues, but this time, that may be of some good, if only we can take advantage of the late arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. The late reporting of confirmed cases should have been, and could still be, Africa's breathing room to put in place regional-level mechanisms to contain the pandemic on the continent as much as is humanly possible.

Yes, there's the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), its COVID-19 Resources <https://africacdc.org/covid-19-and-resources>, and Twitter feed <https://twitter.com/africacdc>. Yet, Africans everywhere need to feel the impact of a strong regional response to the current threat. That is, an authority, which can order, direct, enforce, monitor and report on key elements of national responses to this existential menace.

Is Africa making good progress in containing and eventually defeating the COVID-19 pandemic as countries begin lifting restrictions?

Africa COVID - 19 Response Update

Africa in lockdown over COVID-19

Africa needs effective continent-wide and predictable mechanism on COVID-19 (2)

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