<![CDATA[Coronavirus: Africa, at first spared, now confronts outbreaks all over the continent]>

From South Africa to Ghana to Nigeria, African countries are scrambling to contain the Covid-19 outbreak as hotspots emerge across the continent.

In Ghana, more than 500 workers at a fish factory tested positive for coronavirus; in South Africa, Cape Town has become the nation's coronavirus epicentre. In East Africa, there is growing concern that truck drivers, who transport cargo across borders, have been super-spreaders of the pandemic.

Initially, Africa was not hit as hard as the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, but in the past two weeks or so, the continent has seen a steep increase in new cases. With the announcement Wednesday that Lesotho has its first confirmed case of Covid-19, all 54 countries on the continent have now reported cases.

Most African countries have imposed nationwide lockdowns, grounded international flights, banned large gatherings and taken other measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. And it seemed to be working. At the start of May, Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion, had 39,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,640 deaths.

But as of Tuesday, less than two weeks later, cases had jumped to more than 70,000 and deaths rose to 2,389. Several nations have fragile health care systems, with a lack of medical staff and equipment, and have been forced to rely on foreign aid for testing kits and equipping laboratories and hospitals.

Just since May 1, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, which had started easing restrictive measures for a phased reopening on businesses, have all more than doubled their coronavirus cases.

South Africa, with a better health care system than many of the continent's other nations, has 11,350 confirmed cases, the most in Africa. Deaths have also doubled, to 206.

In part, the confirmed cases are a result of the country having conducted the most tests on the continent " 369,697 as of Tuesday. Most African nations have only run a few hundred or thousand tests even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that the continent may become the pandemic's next epicentre.

"While Covid-19 likely won't spread as exponentially in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder in transmission hotspots," Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organisation director for Africa, said. Photo: Reuters alt="While Covid-19 likely won't spread as exponentially in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder in transmission hotspots," Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organisation director for Africa, said. Photo: Reuters

Last week, WHO forecast that, if containment measures fail, Africa could see 29 million to 44 million infected in the first year of the pandemic " and 83,000 to 190,000 dead.

"While Covid-19 likely won't spread as exponentially in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder in transmission hotspots," Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's regional director for Africa, said.

"Covid-19 could become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region. We need to test, trace, isolate and treat."

South African health officials warned that Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape Province had become the country's pandemic epicentre, followed by Johannesburg in Gauteng Province.

South Africa's health department said Western Cape was seeing the country's greatest rate of community transmission of the virus. As of Tuesday, the province had more than half of South Africa's confirmed cases at 6,194 and 110 deaths " attributed to the province's poor and densely populated townships like Khayelitsha, Cape Town's largest informal settlement.

"This is a matter of concern to us. The outbreak has moved faster than anticipated," said South Africa health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize over the weekend.

"There are a number of areas with cluster outbreaks. We can confirm that number of daily testing has increased. However, there is a shortage of reagents and test kits globally."

"The more people we test for the virus, the more persons we will discover as positive, and, thus, have the opportunity to isolate and treat," Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said. Photo: AFP alt="The more people we test for the virus, the more persons we will discover as positive, and, thus, have the opportunity to isolate and treat," Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said. Photo: AFP

During a televised address to the nation over the weekend, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said that 533 of the 921 new cases the country recorded in just two days last week were workers at a fish-processing factory in Tema.

"All 533 persons were infected by one person," Akufo-Addo said.

As of Sunday, Ghana had conducted a total of 160,501 tests, which the president said had helped identify more infections.

"The more people we test for the virus, the more persons we will discover as positive, and, thus, have the opportunity to isolate and treat them," Akufo-Addo said.

In East Africa, countries are battling to contain Covid-19's spread after it emerged truck drivers who move cargo from ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania had become super-spreaders.

Presidents of four nations " Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Salva Kiir of South Sudan " held a virtual meeting on Tuesday and agreed to start border screening and testing measures. Truck drivers are to be tested for coronavirus every 14 days, quarantining anyone testing positive.

President John Magufuli of Tanzania " which has not enacted any strict measures to curb the coronavirus, skipped the meeting, though Tanzania currently has 509 confirmed cases, with 21 deaths. After neighbouring Zambia recorded its biggest daily jump in cases " most at a town along the Tanzanian border " Zambia closed its border with Tanzania.

On Saturday, Zambia recorded 85 new confirmed cases, 76 in Nakonde, the border town with Tunduma, Tanzania. As of Tuesday, Zambia had a total of 441 Covid-19 cases and seven deaths.

Charles Robertson, Renaissance Capital's global chief economist, said that the worst news in Africa was in Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation, "where only around 28,000 tests have been done, and the recent tests are finding 21 per cent positive results, implying the virus is pretty widespread".

"Nigeria's testing data is telling us there is a fairly significant uncounted coronavirus problem there," Robertson said in a note to subscribers.

He said East Africa remained relatively unaffected, and South Africa looked all right overall, though the Western Cape numbers were much higher.

However, he contended, Africa's young population may help it avoid a coronavirus crisis. "We think that age structure means Africa could be the least impacted by the virus," Robertson said, adding that the market impact was likely to come from the global slowdown and commodity falls rather than the virus itself.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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