Africa's infections and deaths make up less than 4% off the global total, but the World Health Organization has warned the continent is heading toward a second wave off infections.

Africa has not experienced covert 19 infections on the scale that experts had predicted.

But the threat off a new wave has raised fears that the continent is not out of the woods yet.

20 countries have had coronavirus spikes in the past month, and that's for a range of reasons.

In most of the affected African countries.

The rise in new cases is coming from workplaces on family gatherings.

And of course, we know that there are several political elections coming up in a number of countries, campaigns going on and gatherings as far as that is concerned.

And some existing challenges have mounted.

Pregnant women in Zimbabwe now have limited access to medical workers since many facilities are closed.

That's in a country with an already weak healthcare system.

They used to be, um, hospitals, providing Caesarian sections for difficult, but but then, with covet now one getting transport to get to the hospital was the problem.

So what happened?

A number of women were struggling to give back, and by the time they arrived in hospitals, they actually are fatal.

They die.

Adapting to lockdowns is not easy or affordable for many.

Across Africa, for example, not every student can do their online research from home.

Don't have the WiFi at home, so waking up daily and every day I'll in the morning to go toe Kenya Humanity Commission to access the WiFi there.

It's a challenge the moment I get to class and I get access to the Internet.

I usually have timeto toe like to cover up what others have lands.

News that a vaccine is near will be welcomed as much in Africa as elsewhere.

Although their weight logistical challenges relating to how it is rolled out, I am now joined by Professor Yeah, boom.

He is with Epicenter Africa.

That's the research arm off Doctors Without Borders.

He's a specialist in epidemiology and public health.

Welcome back to D.

W news Africa professor, so Africa has now recorded two million cases, but but I want to point out that Frantz and Russia have just the same amount of these are individual countries.

Their population sizes respectively, right, 150 million, uh, in Russia's 67 million in Frantz, this dwarfs Africa's 1.2 billion.

So what is your explanation for the reason the continent seems to be doing better than most parts off the world?

Thank thank you for inviting me again.

I think it's important to remind ourselves What do we mean by doing better?

Is it in terms off?

Number of case, Is it in temple number off death, So definitely determine number off case.

We need thio detect more and more off our population using the different testing that we have, but a number of case.

We have a different population.

I think we've seen mentioning that along and on.

We have a population where the mean age off our case is around 38 years.

Or that's what we see in Cameroon in DSE in many countries, which is different from what we're seeing in most parts of the world, in Europe or in China.

It was around 60 city off age, and we know that the people who are the most as risk off having severe condition or even dying at the older and those having come abilities which is not find as much in her population.

Okay, that is interesting.

You point that out?

Because, for example, in Europe and North America, the the second wave has been deadly.

What would be the dangers off a second wave in Africa, then?

The danger, I think, beyond the sanitary impact.

We also have to look at the economic impact.

Because if we have an important second wave, as you've seen in Kenya, for example, if we have much more case than the first wave, then it will have an impact and country may have to go to lock down.

And we know the impact is have been having in how population population, instead of dying from coffee, they might be affected by a lack off resource.

And some of those people may be in the condition where they cannot survive.

Okay, professor, there is There is much excitement right now about the efficacy off these vaccines that are being developed.

But tell us about the potential challenges that we might face in distributing and administering the vaccine in Africa just from your experience with the Ebola vaccine, for example, you know, during the first time we were using the Ebola vaccine, that's vaccine has to be used on the minus 80 degrees.

And then we were using it in three countries, and it was a very big challenge.

Now have to roll out this vaccine in all African countries.

We definitely need to choose which vaccine is adapted to our environment.

So we talk about the logistical challenge, the cold chain.

We would rather go for a vaccine that can be transported at the normal temperature.

But also we'll need to look at if he gets 90% off efficacy for a vaccine for a disease that affect people like us, where we know that our probability off dying is like one or 2%.

That's not that's not a lot, especially if we don't know the severe adverse event.

So I think Africa will be more.

Let's see, picky in choosing which vaccine should work, should be using our population.

Okay, Professor.

Yeah, Boom.

Thank you for that insight.