South Africa

ADF STAFF At a time when Africans are dealing with the peaks and valleys of COVID-19 infections, China continues to push misinformation about the disease. Government officials in China recently acted on a debunked claim when they…

This article is part of an ongoing series. For more debunked COVID-19 claims visit the first article in the series. ADF STAFF Social media can be an effective tool to spread accurate information about COVID-19 and help guard…

ADF STAFF Scientists studying the long-term health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic say they have found that the disease triples the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and doubles the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease — two neurological…

ADF STAFF South Africa’s Department of Basic Education announced in late June that masks no longer were required in schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement was made a day after South African Health Minister Joseph…

ADF STAFF COVID-19’s highly transmissible omicron subvariants B.A.4 and B.A.5 drove South Africa’s fifth wave of infections and might offer clues to future outbreaks, experts say. The new variants spread faster than previous ones and…

ADF STAFF South African children younger than 9 years old were hospitalized at a higher rate than elderly patients during the country’s fifth wave of COVID-19, which was driven by the highly infectious omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.…

ADF STAFF Pregnant women who are hospitalized with COVID-19 have a higher risk of dying than those who are not pregnant. They are also more at risk of developing serious complications if they have underlying conditions such as…

ADF STAFF More than 11 million people across Africa have survived a COVID-19 infection since the beginning of the pandemic. But that does not mean they’re safe from the virus forever. Researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa…

ADF STAFF The director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, reported recently that a new wave of COVID-19 infections appears to be building in his country, a pattern that is repeating across much of Africa. According to…

ADF STAFF More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly the entire population of South Africa has some level of immunity to the virus that causes the disease, according to a study by the country’s largest blood bank. Researchers…