mask-wearing - The African Mirror

Sep

2021

How will the COVID pandemic end?

AFTER over 18 months of this pandemic, with the social distancing, mask-wearing and on-off lockdowns, what we all want to know more than anything else is when it will all be over and how it will end. While nothing is certain, we have a lot of evidence on which to build some realistic expectations about how the pandemic will progress over the next year or so. PAUL HUNTER, Professor of Medicine, University of East Anglia COVID-19 may not be the first time a coronavirus has caused a dreadful global pandemic. It’s been hypothesised that the “Russian flu”, which emerged in…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Senegal’s famed jazz festival returns after pandemic delay

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

COOPER INVEEN ON a small island where the Senegal River meets the sea, hundreds of mask-wearing jazz enthusiasts listened to French-Senegalese vocalist Awa Ly sing the blues for uncertain times. "Once you touched the sky and you went down," she crooned. "Use your inner senses and you'll figure it out, like a dream you can't remember." Last year COVID-19 halted Saint Louis' jazz festival for the first time in its 29-year history. This year it was back, bringing much needed life to the Island of Saint Louis, a UNESCO World Heritage site famed for its colonial architecture and pastel-coloured houses.…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

In pictures: How COVID-19 changed our cities in 2020

MULTIMEDIA

EMMA BATHA FROM compulsory mask-wearing to pop-up cycle lanes and sanitising robots, the coronavirus pandemic has changed our cities in countless ways. Here are some images from 2020. A dog wears a mask inside an autorickshaw in Chennai, India, March 30, 2020. REUTERS/P. Ravikumar As lockdowns took hold, some of the world's noisiest and most crowded cities became eerily quiet, including metropolises like New York - dubbed the "city that never sleeps". Clockwise: Deserted streets, Paris, France, April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol. The Octavio Frias de Oliveira Bridge, Sao Paulo, Brazil, March 24, 2020. REUTERS/Leonardo Benassatto. A policeman crosses a street in…

Aug

2020

By The African Mirror

Africa beginning to “bend the curve” of coronavirus – Africa CDC

COVID-19

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA and GEORGE OBULUTSA AFRICA is beginning to slowly "bend the curve" of COVID-19 infections as measures like mask-wearing and social distancing slow down the spread of the pandemic on the continent, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak was slow in Africa in the early stages of the pandemic, the rate of infection gradually accelerated especially in South Africa, which now accounts for more than half of its caseload of more than 1.1 million. On average, there were signs of a decline in new infections across Africa over…