Lawrence Williams: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 23 December 2020: Sierra Leone’s Covid-19 audit report uncovers “massive” corruption in the management and utilisation of funds by the National Coronavirus Emergency Response Centre (NaCOVERC) and other Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies. (Photo above – Head of NaCOVERC, Mr Solomon Jamiru). The report highlights that the failure by the Strategic Leadership Team at NaCOVERC to develop a cohesive strategy to guide the overall national response to the pandemic, could have contributed to more infections and possible loss of lives. The auditors established that during the height of the outbreak in Sierra Leone, (i.e. from April to August 2020), there was no well-developed and focused strategy to guide the national response to the pandemic, and as such, decisions relating to threat assessment, resources mobilisation, recruitment and training of skilled personnel, management of quarantined facilities, identification of primary and secondary contacts and caring for infected persons and their families could have been made on ad-hoc and subjective basis; in an uncoordinated and inconsistent manner, giving rise to inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the overall national response to the virus.