Mitigating lockdown challenges in the response to COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa

Mboera, Leonard E G, Akipede, George O, Banerjee, Amitava, Cuevas, Luis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6581-0587, Czypionka, Thomas, Khan, Mishal, Kock, Richard, McCoy, David, Mmbaga, Blandina, Misinzo, Gerald, Shayo, Elizabeth H, Sheel, Meru, Sindato, Calvin and Urassa, Mark (2020) 'Mitigating lockdown challenges in the response to COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa'. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol 96, pp. 308-310.

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which was first reported in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 (Lu et al., 2020) has spread across the world with remarkable speed, with the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declaring a pandemic in March, 2020. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are now reporting an increasing number of cases, both imported and acquired locally. As of 14th April 2020, a cumulative total of approximately, 10,757 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 520 deaths have been reported within the WHO African Region, with South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon recording the biggest number of cases (WHOa, 2020). A recent analysis has indicated that the risk of transmission of COVID-19 in Africa to be relatively lower than in other continents (Haider et al., 2020). However, the scale of COVID-19 infection in the continent and its impact on population health is still unclear. Routine information systems in many parts of the region are inadequate and the current data are likely to underestimate the true extent of the epidemic. Furthermore, because it is unclear as to how COVID-19 will interact with conditions such as malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, one cannot be certain that infection fatality rates in Africa will be similar to those that have been estimated elsewhere.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	WA Public Health > WA 105 Epidemiology WA Public Health > Preventive Medicine > WA 110 Prevention and control of communicable diseases. Transmission of infectious diseases WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WC Communicable Diseases > Virus Diseases > Viral Respiratory Tract Infections. Respirovirus Infections > WC 505 Viral respiratory tract infections
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > Clinical Sciences Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.05.018
Depositing User:	Christine Bradbury
Date Deposited:	14 May 2020 11:35
Last Modified:	12 Aug 2020 10:03
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/14384

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