The World Health Organisation has identified Nigeria and 12 others African countries as high-risk for the deadly coronavirus disease.
The other African countries listed by WHO include: Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
It is unclear what that specifically meant because there has been no reported case in Ghana or Nigeria, yet no such alert has been issued for Western countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, the USA, France, etc, which have all confirmed cases of the deadly coronavirus.
The Virus originated in Wuhan-china and has reportedly killed over 250 people out of the estimated 10,000 people affected within one month.
A statement by WHO said the identified African nations have direct links or a high volume of travel to China. However, Chinses nationals are known to have as much direct contact with other parts of the world, particularly the Western economies.
The statement read in part, “WHO has identified 13 top priority countries (Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) which either have direct links or a high volume of travel to China.
“To ensure rapid detection of the novel coronavirus, it is important to have laboratories which can test samples and WHO is supporting countries to improve their testing capacity. Since this is a new virus, there are currently only two referral laboratories in the African region which have the reagents needed to conduct such tests.
“However, reagent kits are being shipped to more than 20 other countries in the region, so diagnostic capacity is expected to increase over the coming days. Active screening at airports has been established in a majority of these countries and while they will be WHO first areas of focus, the organization will support all countries in the region in their preparation efforts,”
WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said it was critical that countries stepped up their readiness and “in particular put in place effective screening mechanisms at airports and other major points of entry to ensure that the first cases are detected quickly”.
Moeti added, “The quicker countries can detect cases, the faster they will be able to contain an outbreak and ensure the novel coronavirus does not overwhelm health systems.”