COVID-19 deaths - The African Mirror

Jun

2022

Africa’s Covid-19 deaths fall by 94%

BHARGAV ACHARYA and ALEXANDER WINNING DEATHS on the African continent from COVID-19 are expected to fall by nearly 94 percent in 2022 compared to last year, modelling by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed. 2021 was the pandemic's most deadly year in Africa, with COVID-19 the seventh major cause of death, just below malaria. "Our latest analysis suggests that estimated deaths in the African region will shrink to around 60 a day in 2022. ... Last year, we lost an average of 970 people every day," WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti told a virtual news conference. The gulf in the…

May

2022

By The African Mirror

COVID led to 15 million deaths globally, not the 5 million reported – WHO

COVID-19

JENNIFER RIGBY ALMOST three times as many people have died as a result of COVID-19 as official data show, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report, the most comprehensive look at the true global toll of the pandemic so far. There were 14.9 million excess deaths associated with COVID-19 by the end of 2021, the U.N. body said on Thursday. The official count of deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 and reported to WHO in that period, from January 2020 to the end of December 2021, is slightly more than 5.4 million. The WHO's excess mortality figures reflect people…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 pandemic cut life expectancy by most since World War Two –study

COVID-19

VICTOR JACK THE COVID-19 pandemic reduced life expectancy in 2020 by the largest amount since World War Two, according to a study published by Oxford University, with the life expectancy of American men dropping by more than two years. Life expectancy fell by more than six months compared with 2019 in 22 of the 29 countries analysed in the study, which spanned Europe, the United States and Chile. There were reductions in life expectancy in 27 of the 29 countries overall. The university said most life expectancy reductions across different countries could be linked to official COVID-19 deaths. There have…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 deaths in Africa surge 43% week-on-week, WHO says

COVID-19

AFRICA recorded a 43% jump in COVID-19 deaths last week as infections and hospital admissions have risen and countries face shortages of oxygen and intensive-care beds, according to the World Health Organization. The continent's case fatality rate - the proportion of deaths among confirmed cases - stands at 2.6% against the global average of 2.2%, WHO Africa said in its weekly briefing. "Africa's third wave continues its destructive pathway, pushing past yet another grim milestone as the continent's case count tops six million," Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, told the briefing. The surge in infections, which is partly…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Medical supplies flow into India as COVID-19 deaths near 200,000

WORLD

SHILPA JAMKHANDIKAR, RUPAM JAIN and SANJEEV MIGLANI VITAL medical supplies poured into India yesterday as hospitals starved of oxygen supplies and beds turned away coronavirus patients, while a surge in infections pushed the death toll towards 200,000. Supplies from Britain, including 100 ventilators and 95 oxygen concentrators, arrived in Delhi, said Reuters partner ANI, while France is sending oxygen generators able to provide 250 patients with a year's supply of the gas, its embassy said. Even China, locked in a year-long military standoff with India on their disputed Himalayan border, said it was trying to get medical supplies to its…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Hospitals overrun as India’s COVID-19 infections top global record for second day

WORLD

ALASDAIR PAL and NEHA ARORA PEOPLE scrambled for life-saving oxygen supplies across India on Friday and patients lay dying outside hospitals as the capital recorded the equivalent of one death from COVID-19 every five minutes. For the second day running, the country's overnight infection total was higher than ever recorded anywhere in the world since the pandemic began last year, at 332,730. India's second wave has hit with such ferocity that hospitals are running out of oxygen, beds and anti-viral drugs. Many patients have been turned away because there was no space for them, doctors in Delhi said. Ambulance sirens…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 claims the lives of South African politicians

COVID-19

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER TWO prominent South African politicians and two leading trade unionists have died within days of each from COVID-19, as the second wave of the pandemic gains momentum, with South Africa passing the one millions mark in infections. Nomvuso Shabalala, an ANC member of parliament and former deputy mayor of Ethekwini, Dr Nchaupe Mokoape, the former president of the Azanian People’s Organisation and the South African Students Organization and David Simpunzi, the secretary-general of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Patrick Mkhize died within days of each other. In its tribute to Shabalala (60), who was a…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

Pollution adds to Covid-19 deaths, say scientists

HEALTH

TONY CARNIE HEART and air chemistry experts in Germany say the Covid-19 death toll in South Africa and other parts of the world has been significantly exacerbated by high levels of toxic air pollution in several big cities and industrialised nations. In a study published on 27 October in the international journal Cardiovascular Research, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz medical centre found that 15% of Covid-19 deaths globally are attributable to underlying diseases caused by tiny particles of industrial dust pollution. These include diseases of the heart, blood vessels and…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

In Brazil’s Amazon a COVID-19 resurgence dashes herd immunity hopes

WORLD

ANTHONY BOADLE THE largest city in Brazil's Amazon has closed bars and river beaches to contain a fresh surge of coronavirus cases, a trend that may dash theories that Manaus was one of the world's first places to reach collective, or herd, immunity. When a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease, its spread becomes unlikely. University of Sao Paulo researchers suggested that a drastic fall in COVID-19 deaths in Manaus pointed to collective immunity at work, but they also believe that antibodies to the disease after infection may not last more than a few months. Local…