A tweet from an account that frequently promotes COVID-19 and general vaccine misinformation went viral on January 4, 2023 despite the fact that the tweet, which is a screenshot of a story over a year old, originated from a known conspiracy. departure from theory.
The main claim of that story was that “Africa is only 6% vaccinated”, but “Covid has practically disappeared”. The implication is that these data somehow prove the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. That article, published by Natural News-linked outlet Newstarget on November 22, 2021, referenced reports from The Associated Press first published a few days earlier:
A recent Associated Press (AP) article explains that in Zimbabwe no one wears a mask, no one is vaccinated and life continues as normal. People fill the local markets very close to each other and, by God, no one gets sick. …
Only about six percent of Africa is currently flattened…yet the continent remains “one of the least affected regions in the world.”
This Snopes article explores the tweet’s two parallel claims. First, we look at the claim that only 6% of Africa is vaccinated, and second, we explore the claim that the virus has “virtually disappeared” from the region. The first statement is out of date, but was correct as of November 2021. The last statement ignores several issues with data collection.
‘Only about six percent of Africa is vaccinated’
The 6 percent figure, which referred to people with at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, was accurate as of November 2021, but vaccination rates in Africa, while low compared to other regions, have increased since then. In October 2022, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), that figure was around 24%:
Overall, as of October 16, 2022, only 24% of the continent’s population had completed their primary vaccination series compared to coverage of 64% globally. […]
While difficult access to doses undermined vaccination efforts in 2021, these issues have been largely resolved and countries received an average of 67 doses per 100 people compared to 34 doses per 100 people at the end of 2021. and the 13 doses per 100 by the end of September 2021.
‘Covid has practically disappeared’ from Africa
COVID has not “disappeared” from Africa. Numerous studies indicate that the majority of the continent’s inhabitants have antibodies to COVID-19, which are likely to result from infection rather than vaccination. The question, then, is whether the overall burden of the disease is lower in African nations than elsewhere. However, a central problem in answering that question is the lack of reliable data.
As The New York Times reported in March 2022, several countries simply do not have the capacity to test for the presence of COVID-19, making it impossible to attribute a death to it. An illustrative example comes from Sierra Leone:
Most global Covid trackers do not record cases in Sierra Leone because testing for the virus here is effectively non-existent. Without evidence, there are no cases to report. A research project at Njala University in Sierra Leone found that 78 percent of people have antibodies to this coronavirus. Yet Sierra Leone has reported just 125 covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.
On the other hand, the most comprehensive collection of COVID data in Africa comes from South Africa. While those data show, as the Times stated, “that covid has killed a lot of people in that country,” they are almost certainly an underestimate as well:
The only sub-Saharan country where almost all deaths are counted is South Africa. And it is clear from the data that Covid has killed many people in that country, far more than the reported virus deaths. Excess mortality data shows that between May 2020 and September 2021, some 250,000 more people died of natural causes than anticipated for that time period, based on the pattern of previous years. The increases in death rates match those of covid cases, suggesting that the virus was to blame.
Some studies have estimated, based on the alignment of COVID-19 deaths and periods of high excess mortality, that the COVID mortality data for South Africa, on which some predictive models are based, do not reach the mortality rate real by a factor of up to 3.
Some studies have searched for evidence that many deaths recorded as not related to COVID are, in fact, related to it. A study of 1,118 deaths that occurred in Lusaka, Zambia between January and June 2021, for example, identified the presence of COVID in many so-called non-COVID deaths:
During periods of peak transmission, COVID-19 was detected in ~90% of all deaths. We observed three transmission waves that peaked in July 2020, January 2021, and ~June 2021: the AE.1 lineage and the Beta and Delta variants, respectively. PCR signals were strongest among those whose deaths were considered ‘probably due to COVID-19’, and weakest among children, with an age-dependent increase in PCR signal intensity.
Adding to the problems associated with attributing a death to COVID in some African nations is the problem of accurately counting the total number of deaths that occur there in the first place, as the Times reported:
Most people [in Sierra Leone] they die at home, not in hospitals, either because they cannot get to a medical center or because their families take them home to die. Many deaths are never registered with civil authorities.
This pattern is common in sub-Saharan Africa. A recent survey by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa found that official registration systems captured only one in three deaths.
A possible undercount of COVID cases and also total deaths makes it difficult to understand the true burden of COVID-19 in Africa. That said, it cannot reasonably be argued that the disease has disappeared from the entire African continent, or that it has not been affected.
Claims that omit known data issues in COVID death counts misinform the public and are often exploited to fit an anti-vaccine narrative. The same applies to claims derived from deceptively old clickbait articles.
Sources:
“Africa is only 6% vaccinated and the covid has practically disappeared… Scientists are ‘baffled’.” Newstarget.Com, November 22, 2021, https://www.newstarget.com/2021-11-22-africa-6percent-vaccinated-covid-missing-scientists-puzzled.html.
Bradshaw, Debbie, Rob Dorrington, et al. “COVID-19 and all-cause mortality in South Africa: the hidden deaths in the first four waves”. South African Journal of Science, Vol. 118, no. 5-6, June 2022, pp. 1 to 7. SciELO, https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2022/13300.
Bradshaw, Debbie, Robert Dorrington, et al. “Underestimated mortality from COVID-19 in the WHO African Region”. The Lancet Global Health, vol. 10, no. November 11, 2022, p. e1559. www.thelancet.com, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00425-9.
Gill, Christopher J., et al. “What is the prevalence of COVID-19 detection by PCR among deceased persons in Lusaka, Zambia? A postmortem surveillance study”. BMJ Open, Vol. 12, no. December 12, 2022, p. e066763. bmjopen.bmj.com, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-066763.
Nolen, Stephanie. “Trying to solve a Covid mystery: Africa’s low death rates”. The New York Times, March 23, 2022. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/health/covid-africa-deaths.html.
Scientists bewildered, cautious, as Africa avoids COVID disaster. https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-mystified-wary-africa-avoids-074905034.html. Accessed January 5, 2023.
Source: news.google.com