Scientists and medical experts are completely dumbfounded at what they’re seeing in Africa in regards to dealing with COVID.
The entire continent has a very low vaccination rate or only 6%, yet the number of cases has been remarkably low compared to highly vaccinated countries.
“Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” said the chair of global health at Columbia University, Wafaa El-Sadr.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.
Some researchers say the continent’s younger population — the average age is 20 versus about 43 in Western Europe — in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared it the more lethal effects of the virus so far. Several studies are probing whether there might be other explanations, including genetic reasons or past infection with parasitic diseases.
On Friday, researchers working in Uganda said they found COVID-19 patients with high rates of exposure to malaria were less likely to suffer severe disease or death than people with little history of the disease.
“We went into this project thinking we would see a higher rate of negative outcomes in people with a history of malaria infections because that’s what was seen in patients co-infected with malaria and Ebola,” said Jane Achan, a senior research advisor at the Malaria Consortium and a co-author of the study. “We were actually quite surprised to see the opposite — that malaria may have a protective effect.”
I don’t think it’s really any secret as to why they haven’t had a ton of cases. Number one, the thing that the “experts” claim to be our savior in all of this mess is not really a savior at all. But what is interesting, to say the least, is that the numbers are really low in people who have had malaria. Now, let me ask you this…what are people in Africa given to combat malaria?
I think you can figure out the rest from here.
Sources:
AP
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