COVID-19: UN Agency Predicts 300,000 Deaths In Africa

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNESCO) has said that at least 300,000 Africans may die of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNESCO made the prediction on Friday, while making  a call for a $100 billion safety net for the continent. 

The agency also said that  29 million Africans were at risk of extreme poverty due to the impact of the pandemic.

According to UNESCO, “To protect and build towards our shared prosperity at least $100 billion is needed to immediately resource a health and social safety net response.” 

 Africa has recorded over 20,000  cases, a small percentage of the entire cases in the world, while  major economies on the continent, including Nigeria. had locked down to contain the spread of the virus.

Despite the small numbers recorded, the World Health Organisation on Thursday predicted that Africa could record about 10 million cases in three to six months. 

UNESCO said that in the absence of interventions, over 1.2 billion out of Africa’s 1.3 billion population would be infected with the virus and 3.3 million would die in 2020 alone. 

The agency said that  in the best scenario, if there were intense social distancing and a threshold of 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people per week,  122.8 million people would test positive,  2.3 million hospitalisation and 300,000 deaths would be recorded.

“In a best-case scenario … $44 billion would be required for testing, personal protective equipment, and to treat all those requiring hospitalisation…

“We estimate that between 5 million and 29 million people will be pushed below the extreme poverty line of $1.90 per day owing to the impact of COVID-19.” the report said.

Nigeria’s revenue from oil export would shrink by $14 billion and $19.2 billion in 2020.