Secretariat of East African Community Installs Mobile Laboratories and Testing Kits to Stave off the Spread of COVID 19

By Abdul Rahman Bangura –

Picture Credit: Wikimedia

NEW AFRICA BUSINESS NEWS ( NABN ) Freetown, Sierra Leonne- East African Community (EAC) Secretariat has progressed in a bid to accentuate actions to ward off the spread of Coronavirus by establishing migratory laboratories and sampling apparatuses in partner states, as regional ministers for health came together to ponder on the novel Coronavirus. The Sectoral Council of Ministers of Health put out a video conference on March 24th, 2020 to bolster methods to shake off the stretch of COVID 19 in the region.

The discussion shows up on the back of verified COVID-19 cases in four out of six EAC partner regions, with the affected nations mounting on a number of techniques to deal with the outbreak at a time, at the national wide level.

Rwanda was badly affected in East Africa as of March 24th, 2020 after documenting thirty-six cases, heeded by Kenya fifteen cases, Tanzania twelve cases and Uganda nine cases.

Definitely, Uganda retained barely one case until March 23rd, 2020 which but after thirty-five samples were tested eight proved to be positive. In this development, all eight new cases are Ugandan nationals who traveled back from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Two on March 20th, 2020 and six on March 22nd, 2020 aboard the Emirates and Ethiopian Airlines flights.

Peter Owaka -The Senior Public Relations Officer at the Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Department with the EAC Secretariat asserted March 24th, 2020 at EAC Arusha Headquarters that, each partner state will collect a four-wheel vehicle. The vehicles are equipped with laboratory and ICT equipment, as well as all the necessary consumables for a fully functional laboratory with the capacity to conduct tests for Ebola and the Coronavirus in upswing to another pathetic opens.

The EAC Secretariat has also set in place, a Regional Coordination Committee (RCC) with Risk Communication and community engagement; Policy and Guidelines; Finance and Logistics and Data and Statistics sub-committees to supervise the regional COVID-19 response.

The Regional Coordination Committee has already set in motion a number of activities to secure the EAC Organs and Institutions, and support the partner states in battling the virus.

Efforts to contain the spread of the dreadful virus by the regional body comes at the time when each of the East African member states, steps up measures to fight the pandemic.

Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, and Burundi have canceled international flights, with Burundi going the extra mile by suspending even domestic flights.

On March 22nd, 2020, President John Magufuli confirmed that with effect from Monday the government would put all visitors and Tanzanians arriving from the high-risk countries under quarantine at their own expenses for fourteen days.

Last week, the Tanzania government closed all primary, secondary, colleges, and universities for a period of thirty days.

Current Outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Disease- Coronavirus advisory information, World Health Organization & United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people.  Detailed investigations found that SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels to humans. Several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.

Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.

Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing. Source- WHO

who.int/emergencies

Coronavirus Q&A, World Health Organization

who.int/news-room

Coronavirus condition overview, World Health Organization

who.int/health-topics

United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov