Why Covid-19 has been slow to spread in Africa

Temperature monitoring @ Ethio Telecom Addis Ababa

Since the end of January 2020, the world has been battling a deadly virus with no known cure. Although coronavirus appeared in China sometime around December 2019, the first infection did not reach Africa until mid-February 2020. Initially scientists predicted the virus would wipe out millions of people in Africa, but this has not yet happened. In fact, the virus cases have slowly increased in Africa compared to other continents. Africa had the advantages of being the least connected continent to international travel and governments that understood the possible impact of a worldwide health pandemic and acted quickly to halt transmissions.

Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria are the African countries most impacted by Covid-19 to date. Each country has at least one densely populated mega city, which might have contributed to the rapid spread of Covid-19 there. All three countries have encouraged social distancing and instituted lockdowns of varying severity for their populations.

Most countries in Africa have completely locked down their borders to the world. Although this action seemed drastic, it likely helped slow Covid-19 pandemic from quickly reaching and devastating the whole continent. This precaution was used, due to the feared impact of coronavirus on Africa’s notoriously weak healthcare systems. Some countries in Africa have less than one ventilator per 3 million citizens, and many have under equipped hospitals and few ICU beds.  Fortunately, when looking at the number of Covid-19 infections, compared to the population of over 1.2 billion in Africa, the virus’ impact has been minimal to date. Progressive countries like Rwanda have also begun using digital tools to trace potential sources of the coronavirus infection. In addition to closing national borders and using technology to trace Covid-19, schools have also closed until further notice all over the continent. If a country’s borders remained open, such as Ethiopia’s, a mandatory 14-day quarantine of all incoming passengers was put in place.

Given that Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa and did not lockdown, what is the status of Covid-19 as of mid-June 2020?

The first case of coronavirus was recorded in Ethiopia on March 13^th, 2020. For the next 10 weeks there were very few positive infections with numbers in double digits only. Unfortunately, from May 24th cases of Covid-19 in Ethiopia have started to increase by triple digit numbers daily. As of June 14^th, Ethiopia has over 3,000 cases of Covid-19 infection.

What has the Ethiopian government done to resolve this nationwide crisis?

Hand-washing @ Shoa shopping center

All government offices as well as most small and medium size businesses, have implemented a policy of mandatory hand-washing or sanitizing before entering. Simple and mobile hand-washing stations are outside, as are guards preventing someone from entering without washing.  Since the start of the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic, every phone call made in Ethiopia plays a recorded coronavirus awareness message to the caller. This helped bring awareness to the 70 million Ethio Telecom phone users, who might not have television or internet access. Although it is not strictly enforced, the Ethiopian government also made wearing masks in public spaces mandatory. Public transit limits were also put in place where buses, and public taxis could utilize no more than 50% of their seats.

Why Ethiopian Airlines never stopped flying and why Ethiopia was never locked down?

Controversially Ethiopian Airlines (ET), the national carrier of Ethiopia, never stopped flying to China even during the worst of its Covid-19 pandemic. Many Africans were upset with this decision, but if we look at the history of Ethiopian Airlines, we see they never stop flying unless there is a travel ban. During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Ethiopian Airlines still flew their routes all over West Africa and simply took necessary safety precautions. The thinking behind this decision was that ET is the lifeblood of the continent and connects Africa to the rest of the world.

The future of Covid-19 in Africa remains to be seen, but the hope is that African governments use this crisis to strengthen health systems, and increase tracing of disease outbreak and cooperation with each other.  

Stay healthy and safe!