“It is a sign of the challenges medical staff on the front lines of the outbreak face,” WHO Africa region director Matshidiso Moeti said on Thursday.

“The growth we are seeing in Covid-19 cases in Africa is placing an ever greater strain on health services across the continent. This has very real consequences for the individuals who work in them, and there is no more sobering example of this than the rising number of health worker infections.”

Overall, South Africa has 4,821 health workers infected, followed by Ghana (2,065), Nigeria (987), Cameroon (593), Guinea-Bissau (250), Senegal (246), Guinea (244) and Malawi (245), according to WHO data.

So far, about 10 per cent of all cases globally are among health workers, though there is a wide range between individual countries. In Africa, information on health worker infections is still limited, but preliminary data finds that they make up more than 5 per cent of cases in 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, and in four of these, health workers make up more than 10 per cent of all infections, WHO said. Gambia, Niger, Liberia, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique have the highest country-specific proportion of health worker infections. However, the number of fatalities from the infected health care workers is still not available.

Moeti said inadequate access to personal protective equipment (PPE) increased the risk of health worker infection.

“One of the biggest challenges in protecting health workers has been the global shortage of personal protective equipment,” she said, promising that the WHO was helping fill the supply gaps in the region and that 41 million items of PPE were ready to ship from China to cover the needs of 47 African countries. Shipments for an initial set of 23 African countries were planned to start during this weekend, she said.

In many African countries, Moeti said infection prevention and control measures were still not fully implemented in health facilities, putting many at risk. When WHO assessed clinics and hospitals across the continent for these measures, only 16 per cent of the nearly 30,000 facilities surveyed had assessment scores above 75 per cent. Only 7.8 per cent (2213) had isolation capacity and just one third could triage patients.

Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention director John Nkengasong described the situation as “very concerning”. “We always insist that we have to protect our health care workers as these are people critical to enable us to fight not only Covid-19 but other endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/Aids.”

South Africa is the continent’s epicentre of the outbreak and is now ranked fifth among countries, with 42 per cent of the health worker infections recorded in the continent. The country, Africa’s most developed nation, has lately seen the virus spread like wildfire, to 408,052 cases and 6,093 deaths as of Friday and accounts for more than half of infections in Africa.

On Wednesday, South Africa reported 572 deaths, a record daily jump since the onset of the outbreak in March. On Thursday, the country recorded another 153 deaths, a situation Nkengasong said was “very concerning”.

On Monday, Mike Ryan, executive director of health emergencies at the WHO, warned that the spike in infections could signal an impending surge in cases in Africa.

“I think what we’re starting to see is a continued acceleration of transmission in a number of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Ryan said. “I think that has to be taken very, very seriously. South Africa may, unfortunately, be a precursor. It may be a warning for what will happen in the rest of Africa.”