While series of efforts are still going on to curb the emergence of corona-virus in several regions in the world, it is highly important that African countries increase their readiness and most importantly, put in place constructive screening mechanisms at major points of entries like the airports and other places of entries to ensure that first cases are quickly detected and swiftly responded to.
Because the quicker countries in the region detects cases of the epidemic, the faster they will be able to contain the outbreak and ensure that corona-virus does not overwhelm the entire region.
Not too long ago,WHO identified 13 top priority Countries namely (Algeria,Nigeria,Ghana, Cote d’ Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Mauritius, Dr Congo, Ethiopia, South Africa, Angola).
It is reported that all the above mentioned African Countries have direct links or high volume of travel to China.
Though active screening at the airport has been initiated in some of these countries, more precautions need to be taken by individual Countries to avoid catching Corona-virus.
It is also recommended that people should practice good hand and respiratory hygiene and safe food practices. These include washing hands and soap with clean water or alcohol-based hand rub, covering the mouth and nose with a tissue or sleeve when coughing, avoiding close contact with anyone with flu-like symptoms, cooking food, especially meat, thoroughly and avoiding direct unprotected contact with animals. Read more on how to avoid catching coronavirus
A brief fact about Corona-virus
A corona-virus is a type of virus. As a group, corona-viruses are common across the world. Typical symptoms of corona-virus include fever and a cough that may progress to a severe pneumonia causing shortness of breath and breathing difficulties.
Corona-viruses are zoonotic, meaning they are normally transmitted between animals and people. A novel corona-virus (nCoV) is a new strain of the virus that has not been previously identified in humans. For this novel corona-virus (nCoV), both zoonotic and person- to-person transmission has been confirmed.
Generally, corona-virus can cause more severe symptoms in people with weakened immune systems, older people, and those with long-term conditions like diabetes, cancer and chronic lung disease.
Novel corona-virus (COVID-19) is a new strain of corona-virus first identified in Wuhan City, China.