COVID-19 Timebomb in the Global South
Period. 6 – 12 April 2020
Commentary: Action Imperatives for COVID-19 in Africa
Reflections by Dr. Andrew Nevin, Price Waterhouse Cooper Nigeria, 5 April 2020
The Dahdaleh Institute invited Dr. Andrew Nevin, a Partner and Chief Economist at PWC Nigeria, to offer his views on core structural imperatives in dealing with COVID-19 in Africa beyond healthcare responses. In the absence of a climate effect, Dr. Nevin warns African countries are headed for a humanitarian crisis in part due to weak healthcare systems, vulnerable populations, limited risk messaging, overcrowded housing and other difficulties with socially distancing. He anticipates the impacts in Africa could include:- Significant reduction in daily wages;
- Breakdown of food supply chains;
- Inability of the public sector to function virtually;
- Strong private sector response in managing their businesses;
- Confusion about who is in charge, and
- Lack of information.
- Direct transfers to the bottom of the pyramid to replace purchasing power;
- Ensuring that food supply chains keep working;
- Getting organized private sector to support the public sector (e.g. national emergency committees as decision-making bodies with government and industry partners);
- Rapid and coordinated economic support and debt relief by international finance institutions; and
- Reflect on possible structural change (e.g. economic decentralization) following response
How poorer countries are scrambling to prevent a coronavirus disaster
Amy Maxmen, Nature News, 1 April 2020
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00983-9 The threat of a COVID-19 explosion across developing countries continues to grow. While the first dozen cases in Africa were detected in March, the virus likely arrived weeks or months before. Despite the rising incidence of test positive cases, limited testing and contact tracing capacity, political leadership and resource mobilization from donor nations has been lacking, despite calls from the WHO and the UN Secretary General. Many countries face underfunded healthcare systems, unreliable stocks of essential medicines, precarious access to health facilities, and frequent power outages. The Ebola outbreaks also showed that when health systems are overwhelmed by one infectious disease, many often die from a lack of care for malaria, pneumonia and other preventable diseases, as well as care during pregnancy and childbirth. At the same time, case reports from the peak of the epidemic in Wuhan, China suggest that an estimated 2.6 ICU beds were required per 10,000 adults. Italy has less than half that capacity and is overwhelmed. Many low-income countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, have less than one ICU bed per million people. Given the lack of well-funded health systems, countries in Africa are focusing on mitigation strategies to prevent COVID-19 from spreading as soon as they confirm their first cases. This includes shutting down most activities with the threat of arrest, rolling out tests to detect genetic sequences from the virus and a willingness to deploy rapid, easy-to-use tests(even if they are not as accurate as PCR tests that require lab capacity), and sequencing the genome of SARS-Cov-2 sampled from Nigeria.Some say there is a trade-off: save lives or save jobs – this is a false dilemma
Research: COVID-19 pandemic in west Africa
Research on Forecasting Peak Transmission and Health System Utilization
Short-term forecasts of COVID-19 deaths in multiple countries
Imperial College London, 8 April 2020 https://sangeetabhatia03.github.io/covid19-short-term-forecasts/index.html This weekly report by Imperial College London presents forecasts of transmission and mortality estimates over the coming week for 42 countries with active transmission, accounting for the impact of control measures. The caveat with these forecasts is that accuracy varies with the quality of surveillance and reporting, i.e. presenting likely underestimates for countries with poor reporting. That said, based on transmissibility estimates, the COVID-19 epidemic is expected to demonstrate:- Stabilizing patterns in 14 countries (including Italy, Iran, Iraq, South Korea);
- Slow-growth transmission (1<Rt<2) in Spain and Netherlands; and
- Rapidly growing transmission (Rt>2) across 26 countries (including Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, Peru, Turkey, U.K. and U.S.).
- Relatively small (<100) and large (100-1000) in 29 countries;
- Large (1,000-5,000) in 8 countries (including Algeria, Brazil, Germany, Iran, and Turkey); and
- Very large (5,000+) in 5 countries (France, Italy, Spain, U.K. and U.S).