Chronicle Editor
Professor Desmond Manatsa
COVID-19, an abbreviation for Corona Virus Disease discovered in 2019, is a disease with a global outbreak that has no known cure.
It has a high propensity to break through virtually all man-made societal boundaries. This pandemic has been declared a disaster globally as the world is grappling with what is evidently the crisis of unprecedented magnitude for our generation.
Nations are entangled with the struggle to contain its compounding damage and the crisis is so unforgiving.
Whilst threatening discontinuation of global integration through prompting border closures and disruption of global supply chains, it has managed to lump everything under an extremely harsh summarily sentence.
It has swiftly exposed economic inequalities, the vulnerabilities of healthcare systems, the fragility of globalisation and the challenges of dealing with scientific uncertainty through simply tinkering with the well-being of humanity.
This adds a disproportionally huge burden of which Africa may not be able to cope with.
Decades of extensive disaster research that is accompanied by high regional disaster prevalence provide important lessons for overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic.
These lessons should form an essential science foundation from which to launch various attacks to strategically weaken the vicious nature of the coronavirus.
Covid-19 is quite unique in that it constitutes a single global threat that does not respect neither one’s social status, skin colour, ethnicity nor nationality.
Such threat characteristics are extremely rare and were unimagined before.
It has such an audacity to quickly spiral into an evolving global crisis while inflicting grave ramifications upon the foundations of virtually all facets of human life as we know it.
All this unbelievably manifesting simultaneously with enhanced rigour, worse still accomplished in a record time of just a few weeks.
It was able to penetrate the porous man-made social and political boundaries to make it rapidly assume a global character needing a decisive response from all countries and communities, both rich and poor.
In this way Covid-19 is comparable to the awaiting climate change disaster in that it dislocates all global functions.
Climate change manifestations for the increasingly destabilised global climate, even at low warming scenarios, poses catastrophic environmental impact with potential to make well more than 70 percent of the world uninhabitable over the course of the 21st century.
The only difference is that the Covid-19 is characterised by a rapid onset whilst climate change has a creeping onset.
The swiftness in which this disease has altered the social fabric and economic activity in affected countries highlights just how systemic risks can rapidly degenerate in our closely interconnected global village.
The initial severe impact of Covid-19 was on China, then Europe and the United States from which the WHO project a much more severe crisis in Africa.
According to WHO, as of April 18, 2020, a cumulative total of 20 036 confirmed Covid-19 cases with 1 022 deaths have been reported across Africa, with the usual trend of older males continuing to be disproportionately affected by this outbreak.
Egypt was leading with 2 844 cases closely followed by South Africa with 2 783 confirmed cases.
Some argue that these two countries are leading simply because they have embarked on an extensive nationwide testing drive which is able to expose early those affected within their respective population.
Global trends indicate that for Africa, the disease and its impacts are more likely to get worse than better and it may take many more months or longer to recover.
For example, France had 21 cases on 21 February, but exponentially rose to 86 498 cases by March 27.
The US had 16 cases which similarly rose to 100 037 cases during the same period and SA recorded one case on March 1 that escalated to 1 170 cases by March 27.
Because Covid-19 cure is still illusive, the logical tactical response is to slow the pace of infection.
In this regard, the WHO has recommended the implementation of social distancing (reducing physical contact between people), quarantine (separation and restriction of movements of healthy people who may have been exposed to the virus), and isolation (separation and treatment of sick or infected people).
As the gravity of the pandemic in the developed world is no longer a neighbour’s story, but becoming a vivid reality for Africa, calls for voluntary actions in a persuading WHO recommendations are proving insufficient.
As such it has become necessary to use public health laws and police power and even the army to enforce lock/shutdowns and mobility restrictions.
In this development, individuals are essentially not allowed to leave their homes.
The path taken by the wave of disaster towards Africa calls for screening, testing and tracking the disease in all its countries, whilst limiting the movements of people coming into and across State borders, who may have been infected.
Unfortunately, the region does not have much experience with these actions including the means for sustained enforcement.
Africa and Disaster Research Perspective
As an initial step, Africa should take a leaf from disaster research where first and foremost, responding to crises and disasters prioritises the management of expectations.
This is because knowing what to expect, translates into the designing and implementation of effective solutions.
Depending on the location, the Covid-19 demonstrates multi-characteristics and hence there are many uncertainties that goes with it.
It may not just be about the disease and its lethality, but also how rapid it will spread and what strategies will be taken to contain it.
The central message is that hazard and disaster research provides an essential science foundation to support effective decision making when a crisis strikes.
Research has it that actions taken in advance to prepare for known risks consistently result in avoided losses, many times greater than the cost.
It is critical that pandemics as disaster risks become part of mainstream, long term risk management for governments, businesses and the community.
Recommended Action for Covid-19
Dealing with Covid-19 could be a daunting task. It demands immediate and more attention to science, research, innovation and investment in resilience.
It is logical that discovering a vaccine should be the ultimate goal as it provides a complete solution to this quagmire.
According to WHO, this possibility could be some distance away, even in its best scenarios.
Therefore, for now more energy should be expedited in finding ways that can slow the pace of the pandemic in order to save lives.
Local knowledge about the pandemic and its local spreading characteristics should be thoroughly investigated as these may essentially vary from region to region.
Luckily, this is an uncontested area for scientists, researching on the virus and discovering new knowledge.
It then becomes the role of policymakers to listen to these experienced experts while ensuring action upon the best available evidence.
The advice and recommendations coming from the WHO, that is based on decades of experience and widely accepted by public health leaders and scientists around the world, was crystal clear – ‘use every possible tool to suppress transmission’.
One of them is test for cases, trace and quarantine their contacts, which could be supplemented by innovative information based technology to locate who has been at risk.
This provides vital information to act upon when the need to eventually lift the lockdown becomes feasible, to allow shielding the population from hotspots of transmission.
The region has to brace for possible prolonged closure of schools/universities, cancellation of conferences, events and gatherings to prevent the spread of the disease.
In most African countries, the majority of the people are in the informal sector, hence may lack insurance or access to health care in case of job losses which may result from implementing the most stringent measures to curb the spread of the disease.
The general trend is that the most affected are emergency responders and those on the front lines of medical care as they are at the highest risk of exposure to the disease.
Pooling of resources should be prioritised to better protect these high risk groups and ensure that up-to-date training, equipment, supplies and resources are available to those working in care homes and congregate facilities where the disease can spread quickly.
The highly vulnerable sections of the community include the elderly and those in poor health. It becomes necessary to identify and assist low-income, disadvantaged groups as part of a larger strategy of public response.
This goes along with cushioning against significant loses to be expected from the economy and tax revenues.
The goal is to build community resilience through availing local support to the most vulnerable, socially and medically including those worst affected by the negative impact of the control measures.
For Africa, judging from previous experiences, limited resources prolong the period to fully recover from disaster shocks.
The larger the shock, the longer the recovery time needed.
As such, recovery will be most effective if planning and implementation begins early.
The current concentrated focus on preventing the spread of Covid-19 while responding to the needs of those infected and limiting the impacts of economic dislocations, is logically placed.
Although these are welcome initiatives, they are predominantly near-term.
Experience in responding to major disasters demonstrates that leaders must lay out a longer-term plan of action, including an endgame, which can be used by the community and businesses alike, to plan and act.
Hence, planning for longer-term recovery emergency response should be interrogated while keeping the public informed of the set expectations about the recovery process.
What next Africa henceforth?
Immense pressure is brewing and it remains a reality to eventually end shutdowns in most African countries.
It has obviously become a mammoth strain on national economies to keep jobs and businesses afloat while lockdowns are in place.
Their economies are mostly driven by informal traders who survive on hand to mouth.
Thus lifting control measures has to be weighed against the high probability of the deaths of many thousands of people from the virus as it is simply not possible to completely insulate an economy from the impact of this ravaging type of pandemic.
In reality, the science around Covid-19, is evidently still in its infancy though evolving rapidly.
The knowledge however is developing daily, with scientists worldwide trying to understand how the virus spreads and the body response in the bid to find the best approaches of how to treat and control the disease.
As such data on the virus and its impact has not yet reached levels where one can project with certainty the path which will be taken by the disease.
Hence underplaying the impacts of the pandemic due this limited information base may prove a futile exercise especially that it is the lives of people which are largely at stake here.
We are in Covid-19 war phase and lets concentrate on winning the current predicament as the future totally depends on how bruised we come out of this battle.
While the Covid-19 crisis yearns for a global response, it appears governments in the developed world have been largely uncoordinated in their efforts to curb the proliferation of the virus.
These countries are actually turning in to themselves at the exclusion of others.
Worse still, their approach in implementing their policies vary widely, with no two countries adopting a synchronised course of action.
Surprisingly, America is abdicating its role as the principal custodian of UN statutes and is continually crippling this global body including the WHO by consistently withdrawing funding of its quarter to this world body.
Africa instead should not fight in isolation, but work closely with WHO and other related UN bodies in a harmonious manner as this is the only way to effectively conquer this global menace once and for all.
Conclusions
While we grapple to contain the current Covid-19 inflicted disaster, let us not forget that rapidly evolving perennial shocks are already knocking at Africa’s door, waiting to strike anytime probably with a comparable test to public health disaster response.
It is, therefore, essential that while coping with the pandemic, the lethality of other local disasters, is not taken for granted.
Discerning what will have changed in the post Covid-19 era for Africa could be too early, but it will inflict such a huge dent on nations that the way we do business will be forced to change.
As such, the post-Covid-19 epoch should be seen as an opportunity to focus on how to develop sustainable economic growth and employment if Africa’s longer term effects of this crisis can be successfully mitigated.
Lastly, let us positively treat the current crisis as a sort of “stress test” on our institutions.
On one hand, exposing their vulnerabilities is also providing the urgent impetus to build new resilience.
In that respect, we could successfully rebound from this temporary setback with more solid public disaster response measures.
Governments should scrutinise their current responses, problem-solving approaches and institutional design to contain occurrences of similar nature in the future.
In the fight against Covid-19 and future disasters, Africa should benefit from embracing our highly regarded disaster risk reduction ‘law’ which is framed as:
‘Sound science is the recipe for good decisions – those who practice science-based preparedness and prevention suffer less and rebound quicker’.
Professor Desmond Manatsa is a full Professor in Climate Science and the current president of the Africa Alliance for Disaster Risk Institutes (AADRI), an affiliate of the Global Alliance for Disaster Risk Institutes (GADRI) that is based at Kyoto University in Japan. He is also the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Bindura University of Science and Education in Zimbabwe.
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