Egypt was the first African country to confirm a Covid-19 case on the 14 February 2020. By then, China was on fire with 66358 confirmed cases. By then, United States had 13, Italy 2, Spain 3 to mention but a few countries. The second African country to confirm a case was Algeria on 25 February 2020 followed by Nigeria on 28 February 2020. Therefore, the month of February 2020 and the first half March 2020 appeared to be fine for the African continent with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, things started to move from bad to worse in second half of March 2020 as shown in the graph. South Africa was the most hit reaching a peak of 243 new cases on 27 March 2020. Algeria with 132 new cases on 31 March 2020 marked the end of a turbulent month.

This graph shows the trend for March 2020 (daily confirmed cases) only and covering the top 20 (Africa, T20) most affected countries which included South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, DRC, Rwanda, Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda, Zambia, Togo and Djibouti.

But it gives a reader a glimpse into a worst case scenario where the “peak” continues to rise in the first half of April 2020. The raw data up to 6 April 2020 revealed that the confirmed cases from the top 20 affected Africa countries increased from 5469 to 9159, which is an average of 9% per day. A best case scenario would be that the number of new confirmed cases starts to reduce from 9% daily increase to 0% eventually.

The increased number of confirmed cases could be due to the heightened testing as most Africa countries have now received the necessary tools to test for Covid-19. Most of the African countries have implemented partial/full lockdown to try and tame the spread of the virus for an initial period ranging from 14-30 days. Is it enough?

African continent had 9898 confirmed Covid-19 cases (afflicting 49 out of the 54 countries) by 6 April 2020.