◼ COVID-19 / GOVERNMENT Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 2020With60%ofAfricansunder25,thediseasemay
notbeasdeadlythereasit is inEuropeanorAsian
countrieswitholderpopulations.UnlikeintheWest,
withitsnursinghomes,theelderlyinAfricausu-
allystaywiththeirfamilies,reducingclustersofvul-
nerablepeople.AndEbolamayhavegivenAfricaa
bettersenseofhowtodealwithoutbreaks.Asthe
disease—farmorevirulentthancoronavirus,but
lesscommunicable—spread across Africa in 2014,
Nigeria avoided an epidemic by tracking and isolat-
ing potential cases. “The structures and emergency
response strategies that worked well for Ebola are
being reactivated,” says Niniola Williams, head of a
nonprofit that battles infectious diseases in Nigeria.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, who leads Nigeria’s Centerfor Disease Control, is overseeing the country’s
response. In February the German-trained epidemi-
ologist joined a WHO mission on a visit to Wuhan,
the epicenter of the outbreak in China. Since his
return two weeks ago, he’s been in voluntary iso-
lation, working from a cramped studio at his home
in an upscale neighborhood in Abuja. While places
such as the university hospital, with clean wards dat-
ing from the 1980s oil bonanza, are preparing, he
says Nigeria is ill-equipped for an outbreak. Clinics
in smaller cities and the countryside lack every-
thing from bandages to beds to physicians, and he
has a staff of just 250, with five laboratories to test
new infections in a country of 200 million. The U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by con-
trast, has 11,000 employees and hundreds of labs.
Ihekweazu fears the prevalence of malaria in
Africa could make it hard to trace cases, as the ail-
ments’ early symptoms are similar, and the wide-
spread incidence of HIV has left many vulnerable
to Covid-19. “It’s a challenge around diagnoses, a
challenge around care,” he says, hunkered in his
home office, as two assistants work at the table in
the adjacent dining room. “My nightmare scenario
is a situation like Italy, in which significant trans-
mission has already started by the time you have a
chance to control it.” �Alonso Soto and James Paton▼ Built for trauma
patients, the facility is
being repurposed for a
virus outbreak◀ The coronavirus
ward at Abuja Teaching
Hospital is under
constructionPHOTOGRAPHS BY ETINOSA YVONNE FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK