WHO says the COVID epidemic will increase malaria deaths by 69,000 by 2020

Healthcare disruptions linked to the coronavirus pandemic helped malaria kill 69,000 more people in 2020 than the previous year, but a worst-case scenario was averted, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

 

In total over 627,000 people globally - most of them babies in the poorest parts of Africa - were killed by malaria last year compared with 558,000 in 2019, the WHO said in its annual malaria report.

 

The number eclipses the 224,000 people reported to have died from the coronavirus in Africa since the start of the pandemic. “Thanks to urgent and strenuous efforts we can claim that the world has succeeded in averting the worst-case scenario of malaria deaths,” said Pedro Alonso, director of the WHO’s global malaria programme.