Good news from the World Health Organization. In official statements made yesterday, the international body that has been issuing directives on the pandemic for more than six months, announced that Africa may have reached the famous "peak" of positive cases of the virus.
The Continental Director of the WHO, Matshidiso Moeti, said in a videoconference with the African Health Ministers that the number of cases is progressively decreasing.
This obviously does not mean that the danger is passing or that a second wave cannot be foreseen, but for now the data speak clearly.
"We are considering that we have had what seems to have been a peak - said Moeti - and now we notice that the daily number of cases reported overall on the Continent is decreasing".
The evidence is mainly reported in South Africa, which is the country that has recorded almost half of the global African cases (which to date are 1.2 million with about 28 thousand deaths).
South Africa is currently the fifth affected country in the world.
Dr. Moeti added: "Our greatest concern is whether this is actually the first wave and whether there could be another. We have passed our peak, but if you look at Spain for example, it has started to climb back up to the peak after a long pause".
Moeti praised African leaders for taking "extremely courageous and difficult decisions" to implement blocking measures for their countries and their economies to "avoid the catastrophe announced in the first projections of how this virus would affect the African region".
Moreover, many governments have already begun to revoke the blocking rules imposed to limit the spread of the virus.
"Now that the countries are opening their economies, greater vigilance is needed," said Moeti.
In the recent past, the World Health Organization but also many African leaders had expressed the fear that the modest health systems of many countries would collapse under the weight of the Coronavirus pandemic, but all in all, the race to organize has worked and for many countries the slow growth towards the peak has helped.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, during the conference, urged ministers to continue to take advantage of the pandemic to strengthen their health infrastructure.
"COVID-19 has taught us that strong health systems are a matter of national security and survival," he said in his speech.
Meanwhile, in Kenya yesterday there was another day in which the percentage of positive cases compared to swabs was around 5%, with 246 infected and 5 deaths. Data that confirm a descent of the curve and that could soon lead Kenya to the cancellation of other restrictions.