Omicron variant spreads to 7 more African countries in a week

The omicron variant of the coronavirus has spread to seven more countries on the African continent, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.

“Seven more countries, Uganda, Zambia, Senegal, Tunisia, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, have reported the new variant over the past one week”, Africa CDC director, John Nkengasong, said during a weekly press briefing.

“The omicron variant has now spread to 11 countries in Africa”, he pointed out, adding that, last week, it was only confirmed in South Africa, Botswana, Ghana, and Nigeria.

“Africa has so far recorded 8.7 million COVID-19 cases and 24,000 deaths”, according to Nkengasong.

“The case fatality rate is still around 2.5%, which is very stable,” he said, citing the few exceptions, like Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt, that reported a case fatality rate of 5%.

“Between Nov. 29 and Dec. 5, a whopping 98,000 new cases have been reported on the continent, accounting for an average increase of 88% from the previous week”, He said.

“79% of the new cases came from Southern Africa, 14% from North Africa, 3% from East Africa and 2% each from Central and West Africa”, according to the same source.

The continent has so far procured 245.2 million doses of vaccines, of which 131.9 million (56.77%) have been administered.

“10.95% of Africans were partially vaccinated, while 7.35% were fully vaccinated”, according to the Africa CDC website.