The Coronavirus pandemic will likely kill at least 300,000 Africans and risks pushing 29 million into extreme poverty, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said on Friday, calling for a $100 billion safety net for the continent.

The 54 African countries have so far reported fewer than 20,000 confirmed cases of the virus, just a fraction of the more than two million cases reported globally. But the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Thursday that Africa may record as many as 10 million cases in three to six months.

“To protect and build towards our shared prosperity at least $100 billion is needed to immediately resource a health and social safety net response,” the UNECA report stated.

UNECA is also backing a call by African finance ministers for an additional $100 billion in stimulus, which is expected to put off all external debt service.

The agency modelled four scenarios based on the level of preventive measures introduced by African governments.

In the complete absence of such interventions, the survey calculated over 1.2 billion Africans would be infected with the virus and 3.3 million would die this year. Africa has a total population of around 1.3 billion.

However, most African countries have started implementing measures to curb the spread of the pandemic, like maintaining social distancing, imposing curfews and travel ban, whilst some countries have enforced total lockdown of all operations.

Yet even its best-case scenario, where governments introduce intense social distancing once a threshold of 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people per week is reached, Africa would see 122.8 million infections, 2.3 million hospitalisations and 300,000 deaths.

Combating the disease will be complicated by the fact that 36% of Africans have no access to household washing facilities, and the continent counts just 1.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people. France, in comparison, has 5.98 beds per 1,000 people.

Africa’s young demographic - nearly 60% of the population is below the age of 25 - should help stave off the disease. On the other hand, 56 per cent of the urban population is concentrated in overcrowded slums and many people are also vulnerable due to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malnutrition.

 “In a best-case scenario ... $44 billion would be required for testing, personal protective equipment, and to treat all those requiring hospitalisation,” 

“We estimate that between 5 million and 29 million people will be pushed below the extreme poverty line of $1.90 per day owing to the impact of COVID-19,” a UN report said.

Nigeria is expected to lose between $14 billion and $19.2 billion in revenues from oil exports this year. And the prices of other African commodities exports have plummeted as well.