Africa should make data-driven decisions

No need for unnecessary Covid-19 fear and hype. African countries should make quick embrace of modern engine for development, which is data science. Data-driven decision making is the current revolution the world is undergoing and Africa cannot afford to lag behind.

Early this year, Covid-19 was a myth. Global experts didn’t know how exactly the disease would evolve, hence total lock down was necessary. But now Covid-19 is no longer a myth. We have had sufficient time to interact with it in the past six months. But the difference now is that we have adequate data upon which we can draw relevant scientific conclusions. In the scientific world, a myth exists only in the absence of data. 

But when data is available, the myth is translated into confidence intervals, forecasts, and probabilities using statistical tools. There is no need for unnecessary fear and hype.

First, Covid-19 has a high recovery rate estimated at 96 per cent. Second, death demographics are now available and can help us to refine strategies. This is important. It can be seen that 79 per cent of deaths are in patients who are 65+ years. School going ages of 0-24 years contributed only 0.2 per cent to the death toll. 

Similar findings are reported in the UK and other countries. In the UK, 88 per cent of reported death are 65+ years and only 2 per cent are under 50 years. It is not a scientific fact to claim that Covid-19 affects all age groups equally. This creates unnecessary fear and increases risk of the vulnerable 65+ age group. 

The focus should be on massive sensitisation to promote limited contacts between the vulnerable 65+ and the other age groups. Once measures and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are in place for this, there is nothing to prevent Uganda from returning to near-full operation. 

Third, demographics of Uganda and Africa place us in a favourable position in this pandemic and we should take full advantage of this before the Western world wakes up. We should not rely on international forecasts that claim Africans will have more deaths. We have a young population and that is not going to change any time soon. So out of the 45 million Ugandans, about 882,000 about 1.96 per cent are in the vulnerable 65+ age group. 

The number of vulnerable persons in Uganda is quite low and most are in rural areas. We should not expect to experience similar large death rates recorded in those countries in our wildest imagination. 

Based on these estimates and their previous death rates, one can roughly estimate that on extremely worst day, Uganda may experience about 50 deaths. But this is unlikely to happen due to Uganda’s early lockdown, lower mobility, and rural dispersion of the elderly. 

Nicholas Munu,
[email protected]