Was the success of COVID-19 vaccines demonstrated in Africa?

Headlines have been rolling out across the world about the incredible impact of vaccines for reducing COVID-19 mortality. This would be easier to accept if there was a concurrent high mortality in the lowest vaccinated region of the world, in Africa.

Vaccination has been clearly demonstrated to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 in the high risk population cohort.

What has remained more difficult to quantify is the impact of covid vaccines on all cause mortality across a population.

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“If the targets set out by the WHO had been achieved, 1 in 5 lives lost due to COVID-19 in low-income countries could have been prevented.”

Dr Oliver Watson, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis

Watson, Oliver J., et al. "Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study." The Lancet Infectious Diseases 22.9 (2022): 1293-1302.

COVID-19 vaccination has substantially altered the course of the pandemic, saving tens of millions of lives globally. However, inadequate access to vaccines in low-income countries has limited the impact in these settings, reinforcing the need for global vaccine equity and coverage.

What would Africans say?

The COVID-19 mortality statistics across the rest of the world makes stark viewing. Expectation was that Africa would have been most affected, with poor health infrastructure and low vaccination rates.

From a scientific perspective, outcomes are what matters.

Number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide as of September 12, 2022, by country >

The only African country in the top 26 affected by COVID-19 was South Africa.

In fact, if the northern African countries and South Africa was excluded, Kenya (population 53.77 million) had the highest death rate of 5,674 which was lower than Finland (population 5.53 million) with a death rate of 5,768.

Western Sahara has a population of 629,792 and had a death rate of 2. Only two people died of COVID-19!

Image taken from Reuters COVID-19 Tracker

It has been argued that mortality statistics across Africa is poor, therefore cannot be accepted as accurate. Severe COVID-19 is an acute respiratory disorder which will cause death within a few days because of oxygen deprivation. From a clinical perspective, the majority of relatives on observing this, will take their loved one to hospital. Therefore, if hospital statistics in Africa are not indicating a significant rise in these hospital cases over 2 and a half years, it probably has not happened.

These statistics are not in keeping with the general perception across the world. How long can Africa be ignored regarding the remarkably low mortality for COVID-19?

Scientists should at least be curious about these persistent trends after 2 and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic.