COVID in Africa, one year later

This paper presents an update of last year analysis of COVID in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). The number of confirmed cases and deaths has dramatically increased, partially driven by the expanded diagnostic capacity, but it is an unknown undercount of people infected: we are blind with respect to the real size of the pandemic. The aggregate numbers mask a substantial heterogeneity: South Africa accounts for almost half of the cases in the region; Ethiopia, the second top country in the ranking, follows from afar, with only 6% of reported cases. There are signs that the third wave of COVID, driven by the more transmissible Delta variant, is easing off.The concerns that the pandemic would have affected more severely the most vulnerable populations (refugees and internally displaced persons) have not been confirmed: there is no evidence of hospitals overwhelmed nor of high mortality in humanitarian settings, a pattern that has not found an explanation.As of now, only 1% of African has been vaccinated, a sign of vaccine inequity and of 'a catastrophic moral failure' of rich countries, which have secured a surplus of hundred million COVID vaccines that they cannot use.The combined effects of the pandemic and control measures have been particularly severe in SSA economies, where underemployment and job insecurity prevail. Reduced export of commodities, collapse of tourism and agriculture, decline of foreign investment, aid, and remittances have driven million Africans in extreme poverty. The international financial institutions have shifted their strategies from austerity to a strong package of grants and concessional loans to support poor countries, including those in SSA, to cope with the immediate consequences of the pandemic, under the lemma 'vaccine policy is the most important economic policy'.