Coronavirus: Tanzania's President Magufuli has Died

I just recently reported on COVID-19 and Tanzania. The country is similar to North Korea -- in that there is no sharing of information. As I noted back in June, they long ago stopped reporting COVID-19 cases. Tanzania has since made the news as their president John Magufuli died after an 18-day absence from the public. There are some disputes on when he died. CNN (Mar 20) reports on this:

Samia Suluhu Hassan [the new president] said Magufuli had been receiving treatment in a Tanzanian hospital when he died on Wednesday evening.

However, opposition leaders insist Magufuli died of Covid-19 at least one week earlier.

So he either died on March 17th or a week prior to that date.

The official reason of death is:

President John Magufuli, the Covid-denying leader of Tanzania, was said to have died from heart failure, which he apparently battled for more than a decade, according to the country's new president.

While the speculation is that his death was caused by COVID-19:

Tundu Lissu, of the Chadema opposition party, said in an interview with a Kenyan broadcaster Thursday that Magufuli had died from Covid in early March.

"Magufuli died of corona," Lissu said, citing "credible government sources."

Due to his denial approach towards COVID-19, the opposition party has political reasons for saying he died from COVID-19 and obviously Magufuli's party has reason to say he didn't die from COVID-19. I'm not going to try and guess who is telling the truth.

But . . . hopefully, the new president starts to be more open about the spread of COVID-19 across the country. Per Worldometer, there have been just a touch over 110,000 deaths across Africa. Yet, 47% of those deaths happened in South Africa. As Tanzania has done little to stop the spread of the virus, I suspect it would be useful to understand how COVID-19 is impacting that country and how potential similar spreads in other African countries might play out.