Abstract
On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government officially announced the identification of a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as the etiological cause of a severe acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan city, Hubei Province. Over the next weeks, SARS-CoV-2 caused a global pandemic as officially declared by the WHO on March 11, 2020, with confirmed cases and deaths in more than 166 countries. We are experiencing a worldwide phenomenon of unprecedented social and economic consequences. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been fears that the epidemic could strongly impact weaker healthcare systems in poor-resource settings, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The 2million Chinese nationals that live and work in Africa could potentially contribute to the spread of COVID-19 on the continent.
Highlights
On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government officially announced the identification of a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as the etiological cause of a severe acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan city, Hubei Province
SARS-CoV-2 infection could have a tremendous impact on African populations facing the double burden of malnutrition and obesity along with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases
In 2018, the African Region counted 25.7 million people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and almost one-third of new HIV cases worldwide
Summary
On February 5, 2020, even before the first confirmed COVID-19 case on the continent, the Africa CDC established the Africa Task Force for Novel Coronavirus (AFCOR) to oversee preparedness and responses. On February 20, an emergency meeting of the ministers of health of the 55 African member states was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to commit all states to act fast and collectively and to develop and implement a coordinated continent-wide strategy (see Table 1 for a summary of key initiatives by AFCOR and Partners for handling the outbreak) (https:// africacdc.org/download/outbreak-brief-11covid-19-pandemic-31-march-2020/). The WHO African regional office launched, back in 2009, the Stepwise Laboratory Quality Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA) program with the aim to strengthen laboratories’ compliance with international standards through training and mentoring. This has greatly expanded the number of professional laboratory scientists and managers. The GxAlert, a web-based data management system associated to GeneXpertâ, allows automatic transfer of test results from the
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