Days earlier, Zimbabwe recorded just 33 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths, in line with a decline in the disease across the continent, where World Health Organization data show that infections have been dropping since July.

Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is difficult and warn that declining coronavirus trends could easily change.

Less than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated.

On Friday, researchers working in Uganda said they found that COVID-19 patients with high rates of exposure to malaria were less likely to suffer severe illness or death than people with little history of the mosquito-borne disease.

Achan said this may suggest that past infection with malaria could “blunt” the tendency of the immune system to go into overdrive when infected with COVID-19.

Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria, said authorities in Africa are used to curbing outbreaks even without vaccines and credited the extensive networks of community health workers.

Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said African leaders haven’t gotten the credit they deserve for acting quickly; she cited Mali’s decision to close its borders before the coronavirus arrived.

“I think there’s a different cultural approach in Africa, where these countries have approached COVID with a sense of humility because they’ve experienced things like Ebola, polio and malaria,” Sridhar said.

In past months, the coronavirus has pummeled South Africa and is estimated to have killed more than 89,000 people there, by far the most deaths on the continent.

WHO data show that COVID-19 deaths in Africa make up just 3% of the global total, while deaths in the Americas and Europe account for 46% and 29%, respectively.

On Friday, Nigerian authorities began a campaign to significantly expand the West African nation’s COVID-19 immunizations.

“We need to be vaccinating all-out to prepare for the next wave,” said Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, who has advised the South African government on COVID-19.

The impact of the coronavirus has also been relatively muted beyond Africa in poor countries like Afghanistan, where experts predicted that outbreaks amid ongoing conflict would prove disastrous.

Afghanistan has recorded about 7,200 deaths among its 39 million people, although little testing was done amid the conflict, and the actual numbers of cases and deaths are unknown