African nations are facing a surge of COVID-19 cases with less than one intensive care bed and one ventilator per 100,000 people, a Reuters survey has found.
Even in a best-case scenario, the continent could need at least 10 times the number it has now as the outbreak peaks, an analysis of researchers’ projections showed.
The shortages across Africa’s national health systems are among the starkest elements to emerge from the survey, which polled 54 countries and received responses from health officials or independent experts in 48 of them.
The results provide the most detailed public picture to date of the continent’s key resources, testing and personnel for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 262,000 people worldwide, according to a Reuters tally.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Africa, home to 1.3 billion people, could become the next epicentre of the pandemic.
The continent has recorded over 51,000 COVID-19 cases, a fraction of the 3.76 million recorded globally, according to a Reuters tally. But low levels of testing make it impossible to know the true scale of infection. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has said Africa could see nearly 123 million cases this year, causing 300,000 deaths.
Assuming a complete lockdown for an indefinite period, at least 121,000 critical care beds will be needed continent-wide when the pandemic peaks, according to a Reuters analysis of the projections by scientists at Britain’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, on which the UNECA forecasts are based.
That compares with just 9,800 available intensive care beds found in the survey, conducted through April and May. The survey also revealed severe shortfalls in testing, personnel and oxygen supplies.
Many African nations moved quickly to contain the virus, launching high-profile public health campaigns, restricting movement and repurposing factories to produce protective equipment.
“We are preparing,” said Dr. Juliet Nyaga, chief executive of Karen Hospital, a private facility in Kenya, as she showed Reuters an isolation unit they had set up in a nursing school. “But it’s like being in a movie that no one has ever rehearsed, and we didn’t get the script.”
International organizations including the WHO and World Bank are helping, but they say they are hampered by problems finding reliable data to measure the continent’s needs.
