The Coronavirus Pandemic: Why the Continent of Africa Appears Relatively Spared in Severity – An Immunological Perspective

Abstract

Introduction
The World Health Organization has rightly coded coronavirus disease as COVID‑19 as it started in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province of China. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses which have always been in existence for millennia and were
known to infect mainly animals. Due to the weird social and occupational habits of man, these viruses now have cross infectivity in humans, either intentionally or by accident on the part of man. In the past 20 years, there have been two noted outbreaks of coronaviruses, though of relatively less severity and spread, namely, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).[1] SARS and MERS were effectively curtailed, but the COVID‑19 is posing a horrendous threat to humankind by virtue of its casualties already experienced, and the casualties appear to mount by the hour in relatively advanced nations and temperate regions of the world. As at this moment, about 4 months into the pandemic, the African continent has 23,207 cases, with 1131 deaths; Europe has 1,011,640 cases with 103, 663 deaths; North America has 824,147 cases with 43,564 deaths; Asia
has 389,832 cases with 14,942 deaths; South America has 83,219 cases with 3880 deaths; and Oceania has 8157 cases with 83 deaths.[2]