Africa has recorded a little over 1.4 million cases of coronavirus. That’s less than a quarter the figure for the United States alone. Almost half of the continent’s confirmed cases were in South Africa, but even there, the death rate is surprisingly low. People may have a better chance of surviving COVID-19 if they have parasitic worms. It’s a stomach-churning hypothesis based on previous research: The kinds of worms that affect hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the tropics, may be mitigating the most severe effects of the coronavirus.
Coronavirus: Are parasitic worms responsible for low fatality rates in Africa? | COVID-19 Special
