African continent hits 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Africa has surpassed 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases as the continent's top public health official warned Thursday that “we are inevitably edging toward a second wave” of infections.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the 54-nation continent has seen more than 48,000 deaths from COVID-19. Its infections and deaths make up less than 4% of the global total.

The African continent of 1.3 billion people is being warned against “prevention fatigue” as countries loosen pandemic restrictions to ease their economies’ suffering and more people travel.

“We cannot relent. If we relent, then all the sacrifices we put into efforts over the past 10 months will be wiped away,” Africa CDC director John Nkengasong told reporters. He expressed concern that “many countries are not enforcing public health measures, including masking, which is extremely important.”

While the world takes hope from promising COVID-19 vaccines, African health officials also worry the continent will suffer as richer countries buy up supplies.

“Let's celebrate the good news” first, Nkengasong said. But he warned that the Pfizer vaccine requires storage at minus -70 C (-94 F), and such a requirement “already creates an imbalance in the fair distribution or access to those vaccines" as richer countries will be better equipped to move quickly.

A storage network at -70 C (-94 F) was put in place for West Africa's devastating Ebola outbreak a few years ago, but that was localized, Nkengasong said.

“If we were to deploy across the whole continent, it would be extremely challenging to scale it,” he said.

The Moderna vaccine requires storage at -20 C (-4 F), which Nkengasong called promising. But the price of any COVID-19 vaccine is...