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In this commentary, we explore some of the factors purported to be responsible for the low COVID\u201019 infection and case fatality rates in Africa: low testing rate, poor documentation of cause of death, younger age population, good vitamin D status as a result of exposure to sunlight, cross\u2010immunity from other viruses including coronaviruses, and lessons learnt from other infectious diseases such as HIV and Ebola. With the advent of a new variant of COVID\u201019 and inadequate roll\u2010out of vaccines, an innovative and efficient response is needed to ramp up testing, contact tracing and accurate reporting of infection rates and cause of death in order to mitigate the spread of the infection.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/tmi.13575","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,18]],"date-time":"2021-03-18T08:17:41Z","timestamp":1616055461000},"page":"716-719","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":62,"title":["Understanding varying COVID\u201019 mortality rates reported in Africa compared to Europe, Americas and Asia"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"26","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3499-6948","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emeka Francis","family":"Okonji","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Health University of the Western Cape  Cape Town South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1511-2094","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Osaretin Christabel","family":"Okonji","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Pharmacy University of the Western Cape  Cape Town South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1441-2172","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ferdinand C.","family":"Mukumbang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Health University of the Western Cape  Cape Town South Africa"},{"name":"Department of Global Health University of Washington  Seattle WA USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1032-1847","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Brian","family":"Van Wyk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Health University of the Western Cape  Cape Town South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_2_2_1","unstructured":"African Center for Disease Control: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID\u201019). 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