Internationale Zeitschrift für öffentliche Gesundheit und Sicherheit

Introduction: The new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) or (SARS-CoV-2) was first observed in China in early December and by the end of January 2020, it had spread across 171 countries which were gradually affecting the global economy. The surge of COVID 19 in African countries has the potential to take more lives, disintegrate economies, pressured the health systems, and trigger lasting geological and social change if it’s not properly managed. This review summarizes the clinical characteristics of the new COVID 19 and the potential impact on African economy.

Method: The methodology adopted was purely on content analysis of secondary data and observed information from health survey and economic reports from Africa through a comprehensive search using electronic and non-electronic databases. A literature search from the databases of Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC), World Health Organization (WHO) database and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were conducted.

Results: Our review of the subject matter indicated that many areas of African economy and Public Health system appear to be directly vulnerable to the impacts of the novel COVID-19 such as some key financial sectors, manufacturing and transportation, energy and mining, trade and tourism, Pharmaceutical and health system as a result of inadequate drug trials, unsuccessful vaccine trials, travel ban, mobility restrictions and limitation in surveillance/testing.

Conclusion: The surge of this virus has disrupted the medical and public health, economic and infrastructure of most countries in African. Hence, African countries should come together and develop holistic approach to tackle the surge. Individual countries need to improve their health care system, strengthening their laboratory and institutional capacity so that they can carry out clinical trials of new drugs in emergency period. Action framework should be designed with assistance from private sectors in order to secure food supply system, provide stimulus packages and support vulnerable populations during health crisis.

This study adopted the definition of PX of the Beryl Institute as “the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care”. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines universal health coverage “as ensuring that all people have access to needed health services (including prevention, promotion, treatment, rehabilitation and palliation) of sufficient quality to be effective while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship”. These points considered, PX serves as a lens upon which the effectiveness of UHC in the Philippine health system, particularly for facilities and providers may be evaluated and improved upon.

On an auspicious day of Eid-Ul Fitr the 25th May 2020 India got Jersey no-10, an extremely popular number in the sports arena. India holds the 9th position among the countries affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic as on 28th May 2020. Government of India confirmed a biggest 24 hrs spike of 7713 cases on 29th May 2020 to reach a total tally of 168,780. The death total crossed the number of 4978. Thus the case count quadrupled and deaths tripled in the first 25 days since 1 May 2020 when special trains started ferrying labourers from the badly effected cities to their native villages, followed within a week bringing back by flights Indians and expatriates from abroad. The overall recovery rates have reached around 48.5% of the affected cases to a total of 82,000 on date. While the public health professionals in the country do not feel we are fighting against any enemy but highly infectious virus infection that we don’t know much about and neither there is established treatment or prevention except simple epidemiological ways of minimizing the transmission through social distancing, wearing masks when mingling with others, hand hygiene and cough etiquette. On the other hand, our political and bureaucratic seem to understand a war metaphor when it comes to confronting great challenges. But this COVID-19 pandemic is neither a war nor, a known enemy to strategize the victory. Today we are experimenting many options of treating serious patients in dedicated hospitals protecting the health personnel attending them using personal protective equipment (PPE). While global and national efforts are being made aggressively to make an effective vaccine available or over next 6-12 months the community spread of infection will lead to herd immunity as against many other viruses like SARS, NIPHA, MERS etc. that we have learnt to live with. Basically, I would drive a message home that we do not have to fight or win any war as much as we need to learn to make peace with its existence in our world for long.

Aims: A preliminary epidemiological study, based on three months of diagnosed cases and deaths for COVID-19, for the beginning of the pandemic, January to 31 March 2020, was undertaken. Factors that were considered to affect the human-to-human transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were: spike protein structure, the effect of country average monthly temperature. The study also investigated the median age of the country for the subjects who died and the corresponding case fatality ratio (%CFR).

Findings: The presence of the furin cleavage site, the 10 to 20 fold binding affinity of the spike protein, compared to SARS-CoV, were proposed as possible reasons for the much higher cases noted for COVID-19 compared to the SARS disease. The optimum temperature for viral infection with SARS-CoV-2, for COVID-19, appears to be ± 0.07ºC; viral transmission appears to be maximum at -2ºC up to +12ºC (95.3% of cases); transmission appears to decrease at >12ºC (2.0% of cases). The corresponding optimal temperature for SARS-CoV infection, for SARS disease, appears to be ± 6.25ºC. The average, global % CFR for COVID-19, based on 202 countries, is ± 3.2%. Subjects confirmed with COVID-19, in median age range 40.8 (± 4.7) years, are at higher risk of death. The USA has the highest number of infections (140640) as at 31 March 2020; Italy (11.4%) and Spain (8.6%) have the highest percentages of deaths from COVID-19 per population.

Conclusion: The preliminary study outcomes can be used for further investigation, to confirm the actual ages of subjects who died form COVID-19, to confirm the risk age groups for death from COVID-19, to confirm these preliminary optimal temperature ranges that may potentially assist countries to predict risk of future infection based on monthly temperatures per country.