Porous borders place Africa at risk from coronavirus

[#Hattrick]

Egypt has started screening all air passengers arriving from countries where the infection has occurred, while Kenya, which receives at least three flights a day from China, issued a directive to start screening at all ports of entry on 22 January. Nigeria followed suit the same day.

However, Africa’s porous land borders remain a cause for concern among policymakers and health professionals, who fear that unchecked migration and transport between countries could spread the virus quickly.

“These land borders are ignored in all the noise about the coronavirus outbreak and could be possible sources of the infection coming to the continent,” says Nsofor. “Generally, there is no country in Africa fully prepared to detect, prevent and respond to infectious disease outbreak.”

His fears are confirmed by data from the Prevent Epidemics website, which uses information from the WHO to measure a country’s ability to deal with and prevent infectious disease outbreaks. Countries need to score at least 80 points to be considered prepared, but even the most experienced African nations, such as Kenya, South Africa and Sierra Leone, only score between 50 and 60 points.

Poor landlocked nations, such as the Central African Republic or Chad, score in the 20s. These countries are subject to significant amounts of goods transits along roads and have largely uncontrolled land borders.

The problem is compounded by the fact that passengers are not screened when changing flights.

Inas Hamam, a spokeswoman for the WHO’s Middle Eastern regional office, said: “Countries of arrival take responsibility for all screening of passengers, not regional transit hubs. These hubs do, however, have the capacity to detect and respond to suspected cases. Detection of suspected cases and enhancing surveillance systems should be in place in all countries, including countries of arrival.”

Coronavirus is a group of viruses that cause several types of respiratory disease, such as MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). The current outbreak, which began in the Chinese province of Wuhan in December, is a novel strain, dubbed 2019-nCoV.

As of 30 January, 7,834 cases of the virus have been confirmed, out of which 98 were found outside China. A total of 170 people have died of the disease — all of them in China — and 1,370 have been classed with “severe” infection, according to the WHO.

The development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics must be accelerated said Tedros, calling for a review of preparedness plans to assess resources needed to identify, isolate and treat new cases. He warned against the spread of misinformation, saying: "This is the time for science, not rumours."