Cameroon has entered the fourth operational phase in the response against the COVID-19 pandemic as efforts continue to be put in place to strengthen the overall control system in order to stop the evolution of the disease while looking for additional approaches that could eliminate it.

Officials at the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre announced last weekend that the fourth phase of the response will focus on setting the stage for children to return to school without any fear of being infected.

As at September 3, statistics from the Ministry of Public Health show 19,604 confirmed cases, 414 deaths, 18,448 recoveries, and 742 actives cases. This represents a recovery rate of 94.1 percent, a case fatality rate of 2.1 percent, a zero severity rate and a bed occupancy rate of 2.7 percent.

Since the first case of the COVID-19 pandemic was recorded about six months ago, 145 health districts out of the 190 have been affected with the Centre, Littoral, West and East Regions highly affected respectively.

Understanding the figures

According to the Minister of Public Health, Dr Malachie Manaouda, the success rate recorded by Cameroon in the fight against the pandemic can be explained by the fact that the 3T(tracking, testing and treating) mechanism was activated immediately the first case was recorded in the country while the free treatment of patients was equally a big plus.

In addition, the reinforcement of barrier measures, the various sensitisation campaigns as well as the community-driven testing campaigns equally played a greater part in the successes recorded so far.

The figures also show that a spike in the pandemic was recorded between May and June, with about 1360 cases to 2028 cases during that period.