Abstract
.As of June 11, 2020, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reported 4,258 COVID-19 cases with 90 deaths. With other African countries, the DRC faces the challenge of striking a balance between easing public health lockdown measures to curtail the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and minimizing both economic hardships for large sectors of the population and negative impacts on health services for other infectious and noninfectious diseases. The DRC recently controlled its tenth Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, but COVID-19 and a new EVD outbreak beginning on June 1, 2020 in the northwest Équateur Province have added an additional burden to health services. Although the epidemiology and transmission of EVD and COVID-19 differ, leveraging the public health infrastructures and experiences from coordinating the EVD response to guide the public health response to COVID-19 is critical. Building on the DRC’s 40 years of experience with 10 previous EVD outbreaks, we highlight the DRC’s multi-sectoral public health approach to COVID-19, which includes community-based screening, testing, contact-tracing, risk communication, community engagement, and case management. We also highlight remaining challenges and discuss the way forward for achieving control of both COVID-19 and EVD in the DRC.
Highlights
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SNAPSHOTThe spread of COVID-19 compounds the burden on health services in African countries that have experienced recurrent outbreaks of deadly zoonotic diseases in recent years
Most African countries are facing difficult decisions as they attempt to balance efforts to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, control local outbreaks of other infectious diseases, and lessen economic hardships and food insecurity for large sectors of the population.[2,3,4]
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) recently experienced its tenth Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, the second largest globally after the 2014–2016 West African epidemic, which was recently brought under control
Summary
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SNAPSHOTThe spread of COVID-19 compounds the burden on health services in African countries that have experienced recurrent outbreaks of deadly zoonotic diseases in recent years. A multi-sectoral national committee to organize the COVID19 response was created following the diagnosis of the first confirmed cases (Figure 2) using lessons learned from the tenth EVD outbreak.
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