One in Three Zambian Corpses Were Covid Positive, Study Finds

(Bloomberg) -- The Covid-19 pandemic was far deadlier in Zambia than official data show, according to the results of a study in the nation’s capital city. 

The study tested the bodies of 1,118 recently deceased people at a morgue in the capital, Lusaka, for Covid-19 and nearly one third tested positive for the virus, the study by scientists affiliated to institutions including Boston University and several Zambian universities, showed. The findings suggest that official data captured only one-in-10 coronavirus deaths. Deaths were concentrated in Lusaka’s poorest areas and across a wide age spectrum, according to the findings. The study has not been peer-reviewed.

“Covid-19 had a devastating impact in Lusaka,” the study said. “If typical, these findings contradict assertions that Africa was spared from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Africa, which has some of the world’s weakest health systems, has just 11.26 million confirmed infections and 250,000 deaths among a population of 1.3 billion, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. That compares with a global official infection total of 453 million and over 6 million deaths.

Anecdotally hospitals from South Africa to Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Nigeria were at times overwhelmed with patients displaying Covid-19 symptoms. Globally three times as many people may have died of the virus as officially reported and in sub-Saharan Africa there were 14.2 times as many deaths over a historical average compared with those attributed to Covid-19, according to a study conducted at the University of Washington.

During peak transmission periods the disease was found in about 90% of bodies, the Zambian study showed.

The Zambian study also found that 10% of corpses that tested positive for Covid-19 were children. That’s surprising, given how rare pediatric Covid-19 deaths are in high-income countries, they said. It’s not clear that the deaths were caused by the virus.

The study follows on from earlier findings that official testing data only captured a small fraction of total infections in the country. Studies over broader geographies have come to similar conclusions.

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