As of August 18th, the total numbers of COVID-19 cases in Sudan reached 12,582 (28 cases per 100,000 population) and with a death rate of 6.5% (812). If you look at the number of the daily positive cases and the positivity rate you will think that Sudan is driving the virus under control as you can see both indicators are trending down.
But as we said previously, Sudan is not testing enough. You will notice from the second graph that the rate of daily testing is not stable and ranges from 1000 to less than 200 tests per day. For Sudan to truly be able to know the real size of infection rate, Sudan needs to do more than testing suspect cases.
And to add insult to injury, due to the political instability, Sudan had many protests and crowd gatherings, which without doubt accelerated the spread of the virus. Furthermore, the government started to relax some measures that helped, to some extent, in confiding the virus to the state of Khartoum. Recently the government allowed bus travel lines to resume between Khartoum the rest of the states. It also gave the green light for internal flights to resume. And recently the Federal Ministry of Health warned the public of a possible second wave of COVID-19! The strange thing is Sudan never came out of the first wave to get a second one. While it is true that the number of cases in Khartoum and Gazer state is stabilizing, the virus is spreading rapidly in other states such as Nile River, Northern, Red Sea, and Kassala.
These states have less capacity to test and samples are sent all the way to Khartoum for testing and results are only available after a couple of days which make contact tracing almost impossible. Moreover, the medical capacity of the mentioned states is modest in comparison to Khartoum.
The Ministry of Health needs to be transparent and frank with the public. It needs to explain that it has no real picture of the virus spread and the data are limited because testing is limited. Also, it needs to take social distancing measures seriously and not pick and choose when to call for them and when to turn a blind eye.
Further reading:
[تاكيداً لما انفردت به (السوداني): استئناف عمل البصات السفرية للولايات السبت المُقبل – صحيفة السوداني](https://www.alsudaninews.com/ar/?p=84611)
[تقرير لوزارة الصحة يحذر من احتمالات تصاعد حالات الاصابة بكورونا](https://suna-sd.net/ar/single?id=688602
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