When the new coronavirus hit Tanzania in mid-April, President John Magufuli called for three days of national prayer to seek God’s protection from the scourge. Barely a month later, he claimed victory over the disease and invited tourists to return to his East African nation.
FILE PHOTO: A boy stands in front of a graffiti promoting the fight against the coronavirus disease in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, Kenya, May 22, 2020. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
According to the latest data collated by Reuters, Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion people, had over 493,000 confirmed cases and 11,600 deaths. By comparison, Latin America, with roughly half the population, had 2.9 million cases and 129,900 deaths. “We cannot help a country against its own will,” Michel Yao, head of emergency operations for the WHO in Africa, told Reuters. “In some countries, they are having meetings and not inviting us. We are supposed to be the main technical advisor.” Yao declined to single out countries, saying the WHO needed to preserve a working relationship with governments.Tanzania confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 16.
Tanzania has not published nationwide figures since May 8, when it had recorded 509 cases and 21 deaths. Days earlier, President Magufuli dismissed testing kits imported from abroad as faulty, saying on national television that they had also returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw fruit.
Tanzania’s failure to share information about its outbreak has frustrated its neighbours, who fear that gains won through painful lockdowns in their own countries could be jeopardized as Tanzanians cross porous borders. Burundi’s 55-year-old president, Pierre Nkurunziza, died in early June amid speculation he had come down with COVID-19. The government said in a statement he had suffered a heart attack. An air ambulance service told Reuters it had flown his wife, Denise Bucumi, to Kenya on May 21 but declined to confirm reports in the Kenyan media that she had sought treatment for the coronavirus. A family spokesman declined to comment.
“Even at the best of times, collecting quality data from countries is not easy because people are stretched thin,” said John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC. “Combine that with an emergency, and it becomes very, very difficult.”
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