johannesburgnairobidakar africa is seeing an uptick in covid19 infections largely driven by a doubling in cases reported in south africa the world health organization said on thursday urging people across the continent to continue to get vaccinatedafrica had been experiencing a lull in covid cases with the who earlier this month pointing to the longestrunning decline in weekly infections on the continent since the start of the pandemicbut last week cases started to pick up in south africa the country that has recorded the most infections and deaths in africa to date and health authorities there are monitoring for signs of a fifth infection wavethis week new covid19 cases and deaths on the continent increased for the first time after a decline of more than two months for cases and one month for deaths benido impouma director for communicable and noncommunicable diseases at the whos africa office told an online news conferenceimpouma said there was no evidence as yet to suggest the rise in cases was linked to any new sublineages or a new coronavirus varianthelen rees executive director of the university of the witwatersrands reproductive health and hiv institute in johannesburg told the same news conference that an increasing share of south africas covid cases were the ba4 and ba5 sublineages of the omicron variantbut she said the country had so far not seen a huge increase in mortality or intensive care admissionsseparately the who also said on thursday that africa was witnessing a surge in outbreaks of vaccinepreventable diseases including measles polio and yellow feverthe rise in outbreaks of other vaccinepreventable diseases is a warning sign as africa works hard to defeat covid19 we must not forget other health threats who africa director matshidiso moeti said in a statement