WHO Predicts 10 Million Coronavirus Cases in Africa

A regional official at the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that the number of new cases of coronavirus in Africa could jump from thousands to 10 million during a period ranging between three and six months, according to a temporary statistical model, according to Sky News Arabia report.

The director of the World Health Organization's Emergency Response Program for Africa, Michelle Yao, explained that this provisional prediction is subject to change, noting that the worst expectations for the Ebola outbreak were not fulfilled because people changed their behavior in time.

"It is still a matter of scrutiny," he told media representatives at a remote news conference. 

"It is difficult to make an estimate in the long run because the context is changing so much and so does public health measures, when they are fully implemented, they can actually have an impact.”

The poorest continents of the world recorded more than 17 thousand confirmed cases of Covid-19 disease, which is caused by the coronavirus, and about 900 deaths so far, and this is relatively few compared to some other regions of the world, but there are fears that this may confuse the weak health services on the continent. 

"We fear that the virus will continue to spread in some of the African countries. The numbers is increasing every day," said Machidiso Moiti, WHO's regional director for Africa.

The spread of the virus in South Africa, which has the largest number of cases on the continent, has slowed after it began to implement strict general isolation measures, but other countries, such as Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Algeria, have seen above-average deaths.

Moiti said the World Health Organization was working with authorities in those countries to improve patient care and reduce deaths.

Moiti warns that President Donald Trump's cessation of US funding to the World Health Organization will harm the fight against other deadly diseases such as polio, HIV and malaria.

"The potential impact of the decision will be very significant for an area like polio eradication," Moiti said, as Africa approaches the declaration to eradicate the disease.

Trump accused the Geneva-based World Health Organization on Tuesday of promoting "misinformation" published by China about the coronavirus, saying this was likely to exacerbate the outbreak and that it would stop its funding, and defended how it dealt with the crisis.

The new coronavirus has infected more than two million people worldwide, the largest number in the United States.

"We are very hopeful that we will reconsider (stop funding) because the United States government is an important partner, not only financially, it is also an important strategic partner," Moetti added.

She said at the press conference that the organization needs $300 million to help African governments tackle the Corona virus.