After\nlearning from the media how to stay free of COVID-19, Nigerian taxi driver\nEbenezer Akintunde has been carrying around a bottle of hand sanitizer as he\nshuttles between the airport and the city center in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In\nmy car’s pigeonhole, I have up to two dozen masks which I offer to any\npassengers who might need them during the trip,” he said. Nigeria\nconfirmed its first novel coronavirus case on Feb. 28. There are now more than\n100 cases recorded in 15 countries in Africa, according to the World Health\nOrganization (WHO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As\nthe WHO characterized the outbreak as a “pandemic” on Wednesday, more\nAfrican countries are stepping up measures to prevent further spread of the\ndeadly virus across the continent, with lessons learned from Ebola and support\nfrom the international community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ALL-OUT EFFORTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Amid\na hike in the global caseload, African countries are waging all-out efforts\nagainst COVID-19 with lessons learned from the Ebola crisis. The fight against\nCOVID-19 could benefit from the experience learned during the Ebola epidemic,\nsaid Jean-Jacques Muyembe, coordinator in charge of the fight against the Ebola\nvirus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\ncurrent panic caused by COVID-19, which is very similar to that by the Ebola\nvirus, is due to a lack of preparation for these new diseases, said Muyembe.\nDuring the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria between July and September 2014, the\ncountry traced and monitored 899 contacts and secondary cases out of which only\nseven were confirmed killed by the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nigeria\nis now using the same pattern of contact tracing to cope with COVID-19 and so\nare other African countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South\nAfrican Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said his country was ready to deal with\nthe virus with screening intensified at all ports of entry. Outbreak response\nteams have been activated across the country. The government has also\ndesignated hospitals as emergency centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Egyptian\nHealth Minister Hala Zayed said Egypt has imported 250,000 test kits which can\nshorten detection and generate results in 30 minutes, and will distribute them\nto all ports and airports across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kenya,\nwhich confirmed its first coronavirus case on Friday, announced a raft of\nmeasures, including screening passengers at all entry points, canceling all\ninternational conferences, setting up special units to deal with suspected\ncases, and establishing isolation centers across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There\nis no reason to panic as that would be counterproductive. Everything is under\ncontrol,” Cameroon’s Minister of Communication Rene Emmanuel Sadi said on\nSaturday after the country reported its first two cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “So\nfar, our life is as usual. I have not noticed a decline of customers,”\nsaid textile store owner Gbatoagbesse Kossivi from Togo, where the first\ncoronavirus case was reported last week. “My three kids still go to school\nevery day. We do have concerns, but our confidence to overcome the epidemic is\nstrong.” Read\nmore>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After learning from the media how to stay free of COVID-19, Nigerian taxi driver Ebenezer Akintunde has been carrying around a bottle of hand sanitizer as he shuttles between the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}