Outbreak Brief 41: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic

Outbreak Update: Since the last brief (20 October 2020), 3,025,116 new confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and 40,780 new deaths have been reported globally. To date, a total of 42,977,875 COVID-19 cases and 1,152,8883 related deaths (case fatality rate (CFR): 2.7%) have been reported from 219 countries and territories. This week, no new country or territory reported its first case. The distribution of cumulative cases (proportion of global cases) from the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting regions (excluding Africa) are as follows: Eastern Mediterranean Region 2,499,316 (6%), European Region 9,474,721 (22%), Region of the Americas
19,629,837 (46%), South-East Asia Region 8,924,840 (21%) and Western Pacific Region 711,899 (2%). Among the affected locations, India, the United States, France, Brazil and the United Kingdom have reported over 100,000 new cases in the past seven days. For more detailed information on cases and deaths being reported outside of Africa, refer to the WHO daily situation reports.

As of 9 am East African Time (EAT) 27 October 2020, a total of 1,728,682 COVID-19 cases and 41,623 deaths (CFR: 2.4%) have been reported in 55 African Union (AU) Member States. This is 4% of all cases reported globally. Of the countries actively reporting COVID-19 epidemiologic data, thirteen countries are reporting case fatality rates higher than the global case fatality rate of 2.7%, these include Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (7.1%), Chad (6.7%), Sudan (6.1%), Liberia (5.8%), Egypt (5.8), Niger (5.7%), Mali (3.8%), Algeria (3.4%), Gambia (3.3%), Sierra Leone (3.2%), Malawi (3.1%), Zimbabwe (2.9%) and Angola (2.8%).

For Epi week3 43 (19-25 October), 74,565 new COVID-19 cases have been reported, which is a 12% increase in the number of new cases reported when compared to Epi week 42. The majority of new COVID-19 cases being reported for this week are from the Northern region (55%) followed by the Southern (25%), Eastern (16%), Western (3%) and Central (1%) regions. Countries reporting the highest incidence (COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population) this week include Libya (110), Cabo Verde (107), Morocco (57), Tunisia (49), Botswana (26), South Africa (21) and Namibia (14).