The African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has laid out ongoing trials for COVID-19, as part of the continent’s effort in treating and providing for vaccination for the virus.
Totally, separate trials are ongoing in Egypt, Zambia, Nigeria, Tunisia and South Africa. The Africa CDC acclaimed the few comparisons of treatment going on across Africa in fighting the pandemic.
The Africa CDC’s outcomes came through from a virtual meeting with doctors at the Shanghai hospital. They wrote about the Webinar for Clinical Care:
“This is the Africa CDC Institute for Workforce Development (IWD) Clinical Community of Practice weekly webinar to build emergency COVID-19 capacity — a virtual community of practice, bringing doctors and clinical providers together over the internet to learn as a community about how best to diagnose, manage, and treat patients with COVID-19.”
An expert; Dr Taji Rajudeen then went ahead to outline the trials so far:
Egypt: Africa’s most impacted and first to record a case, has 13 trials ongoing, it specifically focuses on therapeutics. Scientists there are also conducting around two trials on vaccines. They are also looking at the place of nutritional support, especially with honey and some immunotherapy trials are going on in Egypt.
Zambia: Has one trial ongoing with hydroxychloroquine – the anti-malarial drug hypothetically coined as a potent remedy.
South Africa: Africa’s most tested country is also part of the W.H.O solidarity trial, which is also looking at the efficacy of Chloroquine, Interferon, Remdesivir.
Nigeria: Like in the cases of Egypt has a trial in progress – still on therapeutic agents.
Tunisa: Two trials ongoing.
Meanwhile, it is of keen interest that the Africa CDC omitted Madagascar, where the government has launched the COVID-Organics remedy. The mixture has not been scientifically approved yet, but President Rajoelina insists the mixture serves both preventive and curative purposes.
As at May 1, all African countries except Lesotho had reported positive cases of the virus. Africa’s total tally is pitching at an approximate number of 38,000 confirmed cases of the virus, with over 12,500 recoveries and 1634 deaths. This statistics is putting the recovery rate of the confirmed cases in the continent to one-third.
