The COVID-19 Era: Myths and Realities in the Ethiopian Context

Abstract

Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is a viral infection caused by the new strain of Coronavirus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV2) originated in December 2019 at the Chinese city of Wuhan. Since then, it has spread globally at an unprecedented scale and infected about 77,530,799 people, and killed 1,724,904 at its one year course. In Ethiopia, there have been 120,638 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 1,864 deaths on the same date. Trend on number of cases and deaths showed a remarkable seasonal rise blown since the start of summer with varying, but high number of attacks until to date. Following the WHO’s marking of COVID-19 as global public health threat, countries had placed diverse strategies to prevent manage the outbreak most of which are still on implementation. Following identification of the first confirmed case in March, the Ethiopian government placed multiple measures through a state of emergency to prevent the transmission of the virus. These included; lockdown, social distancing, hand washing practices, use of a sanitizer, wearing of face masks, limited number of people on public transportation loads, prohibiting public (mass) assemblies, and stay at home campaigns among others. Despite all these efforts, there was a considerable gap to retain an optimum practice of prevention methods attributed to a range of reasons. This, in turn, is leading to an increasing number of cases and mortalities over time. In this commentary, I forward my own reflection and observation in relation to common myths held among some opinion leaders and a significant segment of the society, which I believe, has impacted the way COVID-19 is evolving now. The myths will also be discussed in light with available facts documented in the literature.