Abstract

  Africa is the largest and most populous continent after Asia but with highest number of countries. Africa represents about 1/6 of the world population but Africa is the least represented in the world Genomic population. During the outbreak of COVID-19 there was much concern about Africa due to numerous inadequate health facilities. Data was gotten from the official World Health Organization (WHO) website and was cleaned and arranged in Microsoft Excel version 2019. The data was then visualized using Tableau Public version 10.4. Africa was compared to other regions in two categories: New cases and Deaths. In the number of new cases and deaths, Africa and Western Pacific regions were lower than other regions with the number in Africa being slightly higher than that of Western Pacific from 23rd May and 30th May respectively. The results showed that Africa performs better when compared with the rest of the world in new cases and deaths rate as a result of COVID-19. There is need for equal representation of Africa populace in the genomic world data.

Keywords: COVID-19; Corona-Virus; African; Healthcare

References

1. Wang C., et al. “A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern”. Lancet10223 (2020): 470-473.
2. Richman DD., et al. “Clinical Virology”. 4^th Washington: American Society of Microbiology Press (2016).
3. Chan-Yeung M and Xu RH. “SARS: epidemiology”. Respiration 8 (2003): S9-S14.
4. Tanu S. “A Review of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19)”. Indian Journal of Pediatrics 4 (2020): 281-286.
5. Maclean R. “Africa Braces for Coronavirus but Slowly”. The New York Times (2020).
6. Jason B and Abdalle AM. “Somali medics report rapid rise in death as Covid-19 fears grow”. The Guardian (2020).
7. Maclean R and Marks S. “10 African Countries have no Ventilators. That’s only part of the Problem”. The New York Times (2020).
8. Burke J. “It’s just beginning here: Africa turns to testing as pandemic grips the continent” (2020).
9. Dahir AL. “Coronavirus is Battering Africa’s Growing Middle Class” (2020).
10. Olivier M. “Coronavirus: Unpacking the theories behind Africa’s low infection rate”. The Africa Report (2020).
11. Cell Press. Europeans, Africans have different immune systems, and Neanderthals are partly to thank”. Science Daily (2020).
12. Fumagalli M and Sironi M. “Human genome variability, natural selection and infectious diseases”. Current Opinion in Immunology 30 (2014): 9-16.
13. Grossman SR., et al. “Identifying recent adaptations in large-scale genomic data”. Cell4 (2013): 703-713.
14. Dannemann M., et al. “Introgression of Neandertal- and Denisovan-like Haplotypes Contributes to Adaptive Variation in Human Toll-like Receptors”. American Journal of Human Genetics 1 (2016): 22-33.
15. Quach H., et al. “Genetic Adaptation and Neandertal Admixture Shaped the Immune System of Human Populations”. Cell3 (2016): 643-656.
16. Nédélec Y., et al. “Genetic Ancestry and Natural Selection Drive Population Differences in Immune Responses to Pathogens”. Cell3 (2016): 657-669.
17. Ness RB., et al. “Differential distribution of allelic variants in cytokine genes among African Americans and White Americans”. American Journal of Epidemiology 160 (2004): 1033-1038.
18. Kelley-Hedgepeth A., et al. “Ethnic differences in C-reactive protein concentrations”. Clinical Chemistry 54 (2008): 1027-1037.
19. Pennington R., et al. “Group differences in proneness to inflammation. Infection, genetics and evolution”. Journal of Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics of Infectious Diseases 9 (2009): 1371-1380.
20. Okin D and Medzhitov R. “Evolution of inflammatory diseases”. CB17 (2012): R733-R740.
21. Kaseje N. “Why Sub-Saharan Africa Needs a Unique Response to COVID-19”. World Economic Forum (2020).
22. Kaned T and Ashford LS. “Sub-Saharan Africa’s Demographic and Health Characteristics Will Influence the Course of the COVID-19 Pandemic”. PRB (2020).
23. Weiskopf D., et al. “The aging of the immune system”. Trans Inter11 (2009): 1041-1050.
24. Jiang N., et al. “Lineage structure of the human antibody repertoire in response to influenza vaccination”. Science Translational Medicine 171 (2013): 171ra19.
25. Goronzy JJ and Weyand CM. “Aging, autoimmunity and arthritis: T-cell senescence and contraction of T-cell repertoire diversity - catalysts of autoimmunity and chronic inflammation”. Arthritis Research and Therapy 5 (2003): 225-234.
26. Sheu TT., et al. “Premature CD4+ T cell aging and its contribution to lymphopenia-induced proliferation of memory cells in autoimmune-prone non-obese diabetic mice”. PloS one 2 (2014): e89379.
27. Guernier V., et al. “Ecology drives the worldwide distribution of human diseases”. PLoS Biology 2 (2004): e141.

Citation

Citation: Oderinde GP., et al. “Covid-19: Africa Versus the World". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 5.1 (2021): 33-37.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Oderinde GP., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.