Theme: COVID-19

In the past few days, the dominant debates on COVID-19 have included the development of a vaccine and making it available to a desperate 7.2 billion people worldwide, against the background of an alarming 54.8 million cases of infection and 1.4 million deaths. Three potential vaccines, with promising clinical trial results, have been announced in the last few weeks in the United States (US), Europe and Russia, leaving Africa isolated and marginalised as the developed world engages in highly competitive discoveries.

While Africa has demonstrated a degree of resilience against the COVID-19 pandemic to date, this progress could be affected by a potential second wave of infections. If such a second wave is even worse than the first, which seems to be the pattern in Europe, it will have serious implications for Africa’s health systems, as well as its economy and the growing debt crisis. This situation presents additional challenges for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which has thus far played a leading role in coordinating prevention measures and promoting a coherent African response.

Some of the key words in the unprecedented era of the COVID-19 pandemic are disruption, damage, change, adaptation, recovery and resilience. Against the background of these words, what is clear is that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the status quo as we knew it. In this change, the pandemic has also challenged the interdependence of economies, leading to the disruption of global and regional supply chains. Some of the countries’ early responses to the pandemic were increased protectionist measures, especially with regard to the supply of personal protective equipment.

It is now 245 days since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 constitutes a global pandemic, on 11 March 2020. Many commentators predicted that Africa, with its high levels of poverty, fragile institutions and weak public health systems, would be particularly badly affected by COVID-19, and that it could result in the collapse of social and political stability. Despite rising numbers of infections and severe economic hardships, Africa’s public health systems have not been overwhelmed, people in need have found support and the social order has not disintegrated.