The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020 591“T
here areso many crises in Congo.”
Gervais Folefack, who co-ordinates
the emergency programmes run by the
World Health Organisation (who) in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, has mas-
tered the art of the understatement. The
country has been shattered by war and cor-
ruption. “All the time we are responding to
crises,” says Dr Folefack. He lists the most
recent: Ebola, measles, cholera. To them,
he may well have to add covid-19, a respira-
tory disease that originated in China.
Those who would need to respond to a
surge in covid-19 cases are already busy
with the Ebola outbreak that began in 2018.
“We are trying to prepare,” continues Dr Fo-
lefack, but there is simply not enough time.
So far 99% of confirmed cases of the
new coronavirus have been in China. Of the
1,000-odd cases outside mainland China,
more than half have been on the Diamond
Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan; the
rest are scattered among 27 countries,
mostly in Asia. Covid-19 has spread rapidly
in China despite the government lockingdown entire cities for weeks. China’s ef-
forts, along with the travel restrictions that
many countries have imposed on its citi-
zens, have slowed the virus’s progress. But
many experts fear that it will inevitably be-
come a pandemic. Health authorities are
frantically trying to prepare.
On February 12th Susan Messonnier of
America’s Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention (cdc) said America should be
prepared for the virus “to gain a foothold”
in the country. Doctors in South Africa are
on high alert, says Cheryl Cohen of the Na-
tional Institute for Communicable Dis-
eases. More than 850 medics in all nine of
the country’s provinces have been taught to
spot the disease. The whois sending surgi-
cal masks, gowns and gloves to hospitals in
more than 50 countries. It is teaching
health workers across Africa how to use
them to prevent covid-19 infections—and
how to treat those who have the disease.
Growing numbers of countries are
screening passengers at airports and bor-
ders for signs of covid-19. But when a virusstarts travelling around the world, says Mi-
chael Ryan of the who, its real point of en-
try is a busy emergency room or a doctor’s
surgery. In the 2003 outbreak of sars(se-
vere acute respiratory syndrome), another
coronavirus which spread to more than 20
countries, about 30% of the 8,000 people
infected were health-care workers. Many, if
not most, of the sarsoutbreaks around the
world—from Toronto to Singapore— start-
ed in a hospital with a single patient who
had been infected abroad.
In countries where covid-19 cases are
still rare doctors are, for now, trying to
identify suspected patients by asking those
with a cough and fever about recent travel
to countries with outbreaks of the disease
and then testing them. In America if pa-
tients test negative for seasonal flu, labora-
tories are starting to test for covid-19 (the
country has so far identified 29 cases).
Confirming a suspected infection in a
laboratory can take days. Some small Euro-
pean countries have just one or two labora-
tories able to process covid-19 tests. Eu-
rope’s entire supply of test kits is shipped
from the two main laboratories of the Euro-
pean Centre for Disease Prevention and
Control (ecdc), the eu’s public-healthCovid-19Watchful waiting
GOMA AND KAMPALA
Experts predict that covid-19 will spread more widely; the world is getting readyInternational
Correction:In our article last week on the impact of
covid-19 on global supply chains we said that a
cruise ship was turned away from five countries
because scores on board were infected with the
new coronavirus. In fact, at that point, no one on
board had been found to be infected. Sorry.