JOHANNESBURG - Africa's reported COVID-19 death toll surpassed 100,000 on Friday, a fraction of those reported on other continents but rising fast as a second wave of infections overwhelms hospitals.
"The increased number has led to many severe cases and some of the countries really found it quite difficult to cope," Richard Mihigo, coordinator of the immunization program at the World Health Organization's Africa office, told Reuters. International aid group Doctors Without Borders this month called for urgent vaccine distributions in southern Africa to counter the spread of the new variant, as most African countries have lagged richer Western nations in launching mass vaccination programs.
Then again, in some cases Africa's low testing rates could inflate its true case fatality rate , said Professor Francisca Mutapi, an infectious disease expert at the University of Edinburgh.
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