Abstract
The management of the COVID-19 pandemic represents a challenging process, especially for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to the serious economic and health resource problems it generates. In this article, we assess COVID-19 situation in LMICs and outline emerging problems and possible solutions. The prevention and control of COVID-19 would be based on focused tests exploiting those systems (e.g., GeneXpert®) already used in other scenarios. This would be less stressful for the healthcare system in LMICs. Avoiding close contact with people suffering from acute respiratory infections, frequent handwashing, and avoiding unprotected contact with farm or wild animals are recommended infection control interventions. The appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is required, despite its procurement being especially difficult in LMICs. Patients’ triage should be based on a simple and rapid logarithm to decide who requires isolation and targeted testing for SARS-CoV-2. Being able to estimate which patients will develop severe disease would allow hospitals to better utilize the already limited resources more effectively. In LMICs, laboratories are often in the capital cities; therefore, early diagnosis and isolation become difficult. The number of ICU beds is often insufficient, and the equipment is often old and poorly serviced. LMICs will need access to COVID-19 treatments at minimal prices to ensure that all who need them can be treated. Year-to-date, different vaccines have been approved and are currently available. The main obstacle to accessing them is the limited ability of LMICs to purchase significant quantities of the vaccine.
Highlights
Publications reporting on COVID19 prevention and control, triage strategies, available infrastructure including Intensive Care Unit (ICU), treatment and vaccines;
The World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized the importance of diagnostic tests in tracking and managing COVID-19
Detection is currently based on real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in nasopharyngeal samples [7]
Summary
On 31 December 2019, the Chinese government reported several cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology detected in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province. A week later, a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was identified as the etiological cause of this severe acute respiratory syndrome. On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. For the WHO, a pandemic is the spread of a new disease globally [1]. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), pandemics occur when “new viruses emerge which are able to infect people and spread from person to person in an efficient and sustained way” [2]
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