美国国家公共电台 NPR 新冠德尔塔变种致非洲病例激增（在线收听）

All right, so COVID cases keep dropping here in the U.S., but in parts of the world with low vaccination rates, there are now surges.

好，美国的新冠肺炎病例在不断减少，但在世界上疫苗接种率低的地区，现在出现了激增。

Right. So South America is now a hotspot. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia is setting records for daily cases.

对。目前南美洲是热点地区。东南亚国家印尼正在不断刷新日增病例记录。

Same thing in Bangladesh, where the government is planning a national lockdown later this week.

孟加拉国也发生了同样的事情，该国政府计划在本周晚些时候实施全国封锁。

Parts of Australia and Africa are facing lockdowns, too. Many of these spikes are linked to the highly contagious delta variant.

澳大利亚和非洲部分地区也面临封锁。其中许多病例激增与传染性极强的德尔塔变异毒株有关。

NPR's Jason Beaubien is on the line with us from Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Hi, Jason.

NPR的杰森·博宾将从塞拉利昂首都弗里敦与我们连线。你好，杰森。

Hey. Good morning.

你好。早上好。

So during much of the pandemic, there was kind of a mystery.

在疫情期间的大部分时间里，都有一个谜团。

It looked like the continent of Africa was not getting hit as hard as other parts of the world. Is that now changing?

即非洲大陆似乎并未像世界其他地区那样受到重创。现在情况有改变吗？

Yeah. Africa is solidly into a third wave of infections. Overall cases have surpassed the first wave that hit in the summer of 2020.

是的。非洲正逐步进入第三波感染。总的来说，病例数量已超过2020年夏季的第一波感染。

And there was a second wave around the Christmas, New Year's holiday of 2021. And this third wave now looks to be the worst yet.

第二波感染在2021年圣诞节和新年假期前后出现。而第三波感染目前看来是迄今为止最糟糕的一次。

And partly why this is so concerning is that compared to other regions, very few people in Africa are vaccinated.

部分原因是，与其他地区相比，非洲很少有人接种疫苗。

It's roughly 1% fully immunized. And you've even got some countries that haven't started vaccinations at all.

只有约1%的人完全免疫。有些国家甚至还未开始接种疫苗。

OK, so grim numbers on vaccinations. Is this wave, this surge happening all across the continent?

好，接种疫苗的数量非常糟糕。这波病例激增是在整个非洲大陆上发生的吗？

You know, it's kind of interesting. It's not every country on the continent that's reporting these surges.

这值得注意。并非所有非洲大陆上的国家都报告了病例激增。

Some places still are recording very low numbers. But you're seeing record-breaking numbers of infections coming from every part of the continent.

有些国家的病例数量仍然很低。但是，非洲大陆各地均出现了创纪录的感染人数。

You know, where I am here in West Africa, Sierra Leone is at an all-time high in terms of infections.

我现在在西非，塞拉利昂的感染率创下历史新高。现

Then you go all the way across the continent. Rwanda is also setting numbers that are off the charts for them.

在我们穿越非洲大陆，看看其他国家的情况。卢旺达的病例数量也创下了历史新高。

You go down to southern Africa, Zambia, Namibia — they're being very hard hit, and they're at all time highs.

现在来看非洲南部地区，赞比亚和纳米比亚两国遭遇重创，目前病例数处于历史最高位。

And hospital beds are at 100% capacity. South Africa this week went into a very strict level four lockdown.

医院病床已住满。南非本周开始实施非常严格的四级封锁。

So the impact is being felt all across the continent.

因此，整个非洲大陆都感受到了这种影响。

And is this being driven by the very contagious delta variant?

这是由传染性很强的德尔塔变异毒株引起的吗？

The delta variant is definitely part of what's driving the surges in African countries.

德尔塔变异毒株绝对是导致 非洲国家病例激增的原因之一。

WHO says that testing done in Uganda finds that 97% of the current cases there are the delta variant.

世卫组织表示，在乌干达进行的检测发现，目前97%确诊病例感染的都是德尔塔变异毒株。

Also, samples out of the Democratic Republic of Congo found that the majority are linked to the delta variant.

此外，来自刚果民主共和国的样本发现，大多数病例均与德尔塔变异毒株有关。

But testing for variants is really complicated.

但是变异毒株的检测非常复杂。

And where I am here in Sierra Leone, they don't even have the lab capacity to do this type of genome sequencing.

我现在在塞拉利昂，这个国家甚至没有进行这种基因组测序的实验室能力。

You know, and it's similar in other countries on the continent.

非洲大陆的其他国家也是如此。

So it's unknown whether it is this more transmissible delta variant that's driving these surges here.

因此，目前尚不清楚病例激增是否由这种更易传播德尔塔变异毒株导致。

OK, so if some of it is unknown and some of it is just lacking vaccinations and lab capacity, we have the eternal question, which is, how much of a threat do these surges pose?

好，如果其中一些是未知情况，有些缺乏疫苗接种和实验室能力，我们有一个永恒的问题，那就是，这些激增会造成多大的威胁？

Well, you know, this absolutely poses a threat to the overall efforts to contain this pandemic. You know, Africa is a big continent.

这肯定会对遏制这一疫情的整体努力构成威胁。非洲是一个很大的大陆。

You've got more than a billion people here highly vulnerable to COVID because of these low levels of vaccination.

因为疫苗接种水平低，这里有超过10亿人极易感染新冠肺炎。

And the more transmission that occurs here or anywhere else in the world,

在这里或世界其他地方发生的传播越多，

the more variants that potentially can emerge, variants that could even potentially evade some of the vaccines.

可能出现的变异就越多，甚至可能出现逃过某些疫苗的变异。

So long as you have these high levels of transmission occurring anywhere in the globe, it continues to pose a threat to the rest of the world.

只要全球任何地方有这种高水平的传播，就会继续对世界其他地区构成威胁。

NPR's Jason Beaubien in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Thank you, Jason, for your reporting. We appreciate it.

以上是NPR新闻的杰森·博宾从塞拉利昂首都弗里敦带来的报道。杰森，谢谢你的报道。谢谢。

You're welcome.

不客气。