Coronavirus: Africa in the midst of a Third Wave?

Back in May, I wrote about concerns that Africa could suffer the same COVID-19 fate at India was going through (at that time) in the near future. Fast forward a couple months and there are indicates that Africa is suffering through the start of a wave that is more significant that previous ones. BBC (Jul 2) reports:

New cases have been increasing for six weeks running and rose by an average of 25% week-on-week to almost 202,000 in the week ending on 27 June.

The figure is very close to the continent's previous record of 224,000 new cases a week during the second wave in January.

"The speed and scale of Africa's third wave is like nothing we've seen before. The rampant spread of more contagious variants pushes the threat to Africa up to a whole new level," says Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa.

The spread in cases is being driven by the delta variant (first discovered in India). The Associated Press (Jul 2) reports:

The delta variant, reported in 16 African countries, has become dominant in South Africa, which accounts for more than half of Africa’s new cases. It was detected in 97% of samples sequenced in Uganda and in 79% of samples sequenced in Congo, said the WHO.

Per Worldometer, around 150,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Africa. We're talking about a continent with a population of over 1.2 billion. That's in the ball park -- though higher -- than deaths in France, Italy, Russia and the UK. And those countries have a fraction of the population. On the other hand, there is probably under-reporting, but how under-reported can it really be?

Now this third wave could become much more deadly, but the following context should be provided. The BBC highlighted 6 countries. Let's see how they're doing in terms of new cases via Worldmeter. 

DR Congo: cases appear to have peaked.

Namibia: cases appear to have peaked.

Rwanda: cases appear to have plateaued.

Tunisia: cases are on the rise.

Uganda: cases appear to have peaked.

Zambia: cases appear to have peaked.

Is the WHO over-exaggerating the risk to the continent by saying that this third wave is "like nothing we've seen before?" 

The BBC mentioned that cases have been increasing for six weeks. But based on Worldometer, it appears that of the 6 countries mentioned 4 have already peaked. Is that possible? Now these data curves could all change rapidly and downward trends could reverse. 

From all my tracking of Africa, I would say outside of Tunisia and South Africa (leaving out the a handful of countries with very small populations), that none of the countries on the continent have suffered through a significant COVID-19 wave yet. Maybe the previous waves were much higher than reported (due to lack of testing) and that circumstances such as age just has resulted in few hospitalizations and deaths (if hospitals and cemeteries were being over-whelmed, I'm sure I would have come across articles about that).

As has been true about Africa since the start of the pandemic, it doesn't appear like COVID-19 has caused serious harm for most of the countries. Yet, that doesn't mean it will always be true. With the fact that vaccine availability is limited on the continent, one never knows how this COVID-19 story will end for the continent.