Our african country staying ahead of the coronavirus the continent has some of the worlds lowest infection and death rates but always getting the whole picture of whats really happening this is inside story. Hello welcome to the program and its. When covert 19 started to spread around the world aid workers warned of disaster for africa fearing for weak and poorly funded Health Systems in many places and crowded cities making social distancing impossible but african countries appear to be managing data from Johns HopkinsUniversity Shows relatively few cases in Subsaharan Africa compared to the hot spots in the United States europe and latin america just under 4000 african deaths so far and 130000 infections senegal has one of the worlds highest recovery rates research is there a trial in a testing kit that can return results in 10 minutes and costs just under a dollar in ghana the World Health Organization is looking into an approach called pool Testing Health workers analyzed multiple blood samples and conducted individual tests only if they find a positive result south africa as the continents highest number of infections a tough lock down a slow the spread of the disease but many poor South Africans have lost their jobs in tanzania opposition politicians accuse the government of downplaying the outbreak social media videos show people in protective suits burying corona victims at night Scientists Say theyre not getting a full picture across the continent because of low testing rates the World Health Organization predicts nearly a quarter of a 1000000000 africans will be infected over the next year. The actual number of deaths are not as high which suggests to me that we have actually kind of dodged a bullet but were not out of the woods yet because if you look at a country like america especially in new york when there are i think 3 or 4 weeks ahead of us in terms of the count but about 45 weeks ago they didnt seem to have any big problem then they had that exponential sarge which we have yet to find here. Lets introduce our guests in johannesburg we have Shabir Mattie director of the south African MedicalResearch Council and a member of the south African Ministerial Advisory Committee on covert 19 in ugandas capital kampala dr ali of kabul saying fellow at the Georgia Institute for Global Health and in yonder in cameroon boom Regional Representative of epicenter africa the Research Branch of Doctors Without Borders welcome to you all ill start with you should bear the spread of coronavirus been contained or just delayed in africa. Well i think its a combination of 2 things its probably been delayed compared to what this happened in the Northern Hemisphere a quarter point complete as your budget. The destiny that i didnt africa is amongst a lot of us into well so the country would offer us just in great except our side of this expedition right now is south africa where the destiny made this about the 1000 of the population in how the african countries as an example the maji had the destiny is you know coming to the 1000 of the population in contrast menu item countries guessing right is about at least good to 15 times higher than what it is in south africa so its really difficult to sort of make any sort of meaningful analysis in terms of the number of cases that really i mean africa that the reports that we see up based on cases that have been investigated and obviously in the absence of actually investigating you something youre not going to report anything some of the date that its coming out including south africa reality and that epicenter meant he should have covered many in africa including back number of cases as well as in terms of the number of deaths by the same time i think create reality that if we had an early stage in terms of the objects in africa compared to other Northern Hemisphere i couldnt or what do weeks ago all of where you are in any staff ricco all the rest of us missing something is the worst yet to come or has it been successfully contained so in fact because i think a number of things are happening so this happened to be in a good way. They really thought oh the u. S. Looked down even before we saw any cases in the country for instance in uganda we we instituted we closed schools large gatherings places of worship and i date up to the 1st case came into the country we closed the International Amplitude have been theory at. All border so theres been a little bit spent on making sure that the virus doesnt get into the. Community so there is virtually no Community Transmission but then. Again. Public private transportation with a curfew beginning at 7 pm and i think that is so it might be a rarity that me being given very. About so i think the real test is going to be once we leave those. And we begin to have community d transmission in west africa generally there seems to be infection rates a generally higher than in eastern and Southern Africa how is it being successfully contained there what do you think its always interesting to figure out the diversity among countries because you should take even in west africa you have nigeria was very high a number of cases as you are doing right now but how was a country like total where the number of cases definitely less than done a 1000 so what is happening trans depends on the dynamic in the in the country the mobility to number of kids that has been reported and then you will have those countries with quite expulse though they have to kants quite a number of measures. In the beginning since right now we are seeing an increase but what we see currently in cameroon for example a way they have been some measure to lift a lot down we can see that seems to me almost the number of kids are just as double. That so depending on the country and even if we did a country you will see a diversity in how the pandemic is going on so we cannot say that its been content we have to be present and to see how. The feet are going on across africa that been lockdowns to varying degrees of severity youve got a very severe one in south africa but its not locked out only dinette delaying the inevitable do you think youre going to see an explosion of cases as that lock down is reduced. Yes i think its very important to understand the object of supplying a lockdown the reason why south africa and many other african countries trying to enter locked up is very different from the reason why the United States and many European Countries went into lockdown it was sort of an opportunity to try to contain the spread of the virus and from many countries most countries including south africa unfortunately that wasnt successful but the good things used to write the French Mission of the vitus for pete of time which allows casket facilities to bet that to become gothic club in terms of dealing with what hes going to be in the event the event that you know eventually d such in terms of number of cases that its going to happen a lot and its going to sort of move that a few weeks into the future not that immediately and oh yes a lot of Health Care Facilities to bed to become got picked up but then a major problem in terms of implementation of lockdowns in africa is that the most important part of a lockdown at this stage if you wanted to contain the spread of divides its dependent on europe but at the desk at scale to identify the infectious cases at an early stage to trace a context but that context into quite a team even in south africa unfortunately thats tepid you wasnt in place at the time when the lockdown was implemented and in other african countries even less of that in south africa so what they saw happen in south africa is an example of the fight with peta but the lockdown is that in the 1st 2 weeks of the lockdown the average number of cases what that did to 5 but in my book that separate that in the 1st 2 weeks of the lockdown was actually the best and a number of deaths to do have been done before the locked up in the last week up to lock down the number of cases each taking place for an average of 400 and the reason why i think this took it to 400. 00 instead there was a danforth in place in terms of the amount of testing that was done and now out the biggest challenge that africa faces he said we did not kept at the but it cant the best city to do guesting the way should be done to be able to come troll identify hotspots and control the rate of transmission of. Right and that is a major challenge including unfortunately one of the motives for a country which is article ok however i see you nodding away that you recognize similarities with how the lockdown went and the effect of it in uganda we have certainly theres been a challenge with securing enough desk so that. I seriously mitigation and indeed the expectation was that during the lockdown that we post our Health Care System that we put in place all of what it takes for Health Workers to to be able to be sufficiently protected but also to have sufficient numbers of test case field workers that would do the Contract Tracing test in isolation quarantining and all of what goes into containing the infection. The indications are that we are coming through are. Somewhat relaxing the lockdowns and may be lifting some element of the lock down and im not entirely sure that the ministry is admission is that we are behind on take on test. And i think the other point about the knockdown is that while the. The intention was to reduce Peoples Movement in many areas where people were very nice hand to mouth they were not able to stay in their homes and in fact the instructions stay home and stay safe was unrealistic that people really needed to get out of their homes and and look for food and be able to surprise a lot of them so theyre not down in certain areas have not been as effective as they could are being and yet weve heard from some african countries how effective tracing has been tracking and tracing because you have to do before previous outbreaks has been effective in cameroon to try to track. The trucking are being quite. Impressive especially during their 1st the 1st case that were having in yeah one day in the capital city but let me just come back to the lockdown because cameron is quite particular in the way that we have not followed the law down the way other people or the country has been implementing so what we did actually was to close the bar and restaurant after 6 pm. And to reduce the number of people in the public transport so each mean people are still able to move between cities and thats why as compared to what you would see in a country like i have all recourse even uganda and so on the way you have a centralised number of killers in the capital city in cameroon you have the kids in the 10 region of the country with the highest number in the center where you have. Yelling day in the what are but also in the west west region so each means that point the virus has the time to go within the Community Reach make it very hard to contact risk because when you have the beginning of the outbreak and you are able to follow lets say 20 to 50 contact per patient thats steve feasible but when you reach a certain number or lets say it 5000 kids and each 1 may have to 10100 contact that its become much more difficult to reach bushels now to think about what is the next strategy are we going to continue on Contact Tracing or are we going to do mass our t. V. Screening in the community so thats where we are currently ok i see not in a way that will come back to you in a 2nd but will just take us a short pause because earlier we mentioned how senegal is tackling the coronavirus our correspondent Nicholas Hogg went to take a closer look last month. Senegal is doing what most countries count testing everyone symptoms are not entering a Health Center for the Novel Coronavirus it has no shortage of testing kit thanks to this lab at the best researchers are developing a one dollar quick diagnose ticket originally made to test for dengue fever patients drop blood or saliva onto the devices and wait for a blood line to appear like a pregnancy test explains researcher i do sound tests there is no need for a highly equipped its a simple test that can be done anywhere the idea is to record lee produce 2. 00 to 4000000. 00 kids not just for us but for african countries so that we can detect and isolate patients quickly. With only 50 ventilator machines for 16000000. 00 people senegalese engineer using a 3 d. Printing machine to produce more well imported ventilators cost 16000. 00 and this one is just 60. 00 coronavirus is one of many deadly infections the country is dealing with Lessons Learned from the aids epidemic the recent a bull outbreak were key in senegal strategy in dealing with the pandemic. Sheer when all this started your initial modeling said 120000 people would die in south africa because of covert 19 those were based on data from china then you revised it down 245000. 575. 77 deaths so far so the seems an awful lot of deaths to come are we are we being too pessimistic. Yeah so just to correct that wasnt my models it was modest epidemic in south africa but i think groups and he initiated ask them about anything between 8000235000 extension 0 South Africans that took diet with the cost of Government Team and those figures more because something has been sort of done to move downwards to the estimate of the conflict a 1075. 00 and now the reality is really dont know sort of the picture as an example has to be made to put a hold of africa its begin to come to an end to the bank and to the 100000. 00 people that might die from government in south africa makes up less than 5 percent of the african population so its very unlikely that youre going to be contributing to a bar at the port of all of those debts so the answer is we do really dont know what we need to be cautious in terms of what his marketing tells us in the process a lot of assumptions made which might not necessarily be applicable to the african context south africa as you mentioned in terms of the number of deaths so just under 2000 do expect a huge increase and on sunday fortunately its yes but not important thing that we need to really start internet icing step when we talk affected 1000 or 75000. 00 people dying those stats are not going to necessarily take place over a single wave of the epidemic its probably going to be multiple waves which will probably explode continue writing to drink you know 12022 and dad going to get to relate that number get that theyre going to take place over a period of time and thats also important when governments think about how to respect the giants out on that response because this is not a step that you that youre developing for 2 to 3 months or 3 to 5 months ago that 19 is not going to go away at the end of 2020 its going to be with us with multiple waves and i think most scientists have now come to agree that you respect if we have enough high income country a low income country this is an agenda i think you need to plan for d for the next 2 years at least ok all of youve written about the 600. And 66000000. 00 that the ugandan government borrowed from the European Union to go towards fighting coronavirus and the corruption that happened with that money youre suggesting that ugandas kept a lid on the coronavirus by accident rather than design is that the case that could very well be true and i fear that if for whatever reason the deaths that way expected dont happen could serve we could if they have you know some chest thumping and i still that we done better than some countries that have more Robust Health care when in fact our sort out what we see is very mild cases or its interim atic people that are staying positive so i think that. There needs to be some. Some candid discussion around what exactly is it that weve done for there to be 0 number of deaths occur in a fire the other disturbing thing is that i think we can be way more focused too focused on the deaths that are a direct result of the virus and forget that every day that passes hundreds of ugandans are dying of all manner of illnesses some of which could have been someone with death could have been prevented if we didnt have lockdown so i think we need to look at the deaths that are happening as a result of the virus direct result and infection or they start happening because in fact weve been treated as serious lock down and the population that was not prepared at all for the low and the government had done very little to support that initial rule with extreme lockdown you have all it has a point doesnt she i mean africa you have tb deaths h. I. V. Deaths deaths from malaria and dysentery killing millions of people a year across the continent has the law lockdowns doing more harm than good or by hiding. Deaths from other illnesses and diseases definitively when you actually put all your resources whether you. And rissoles Material Resources on fighting and converts it will defeat have an impact on your disease guarantee that there is an outbreak of cholera and cameroon you have measle many attrition in chad and all those diseases will lead to an increased number of deaths of children because they are less resource to go and tracked those patients but something that is important to know. People day when we look at the data that we have from cameroon from. Most