As coronavirus spreads into shantytowns, Africa faces tough new test

A general view of shacks during a nationwide 21 day lockdown in an attempt to contain the coronavirus disease outbreak in Umlazi township near Durban, South Africa, March 31, 2020.The coronavirus pandemic has begun spreading into some of Africa’s most impoverished communities, leaving the continent facing a huge test: whether it can contain the virus in overcrowded settlements where water and sanitation are scarce.

"This is an area that we've been really concerned about,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a media briefing on Tuesday night. “We need to make sure we act quite swiftly to reduce the internal spread.” “We’ll go to hotspots, we’ll go to every patient who is positive and target the areas where they were identified and look for people with symptoms and triage them,” Dr. Mkhize said.

About 54 per cent of South African households do not have piped water in their homes, making it harder for them to follow the advice on washing hands to prevent infection. Six cases have been confirmed in the Central African Republic – an impoverished and war-torn country where the health system is so fragile that it has only three ventilators. “Three ventilators in a country of five million people is setting the country up for catastrophe,” said David Manan of the Norwegian Refugee Council in a statement on Tuesday.

In Uganda this week, two construction workers were shot and injured by police when they were heading to work on a motorcycle, allegedly violating a travel-ban order.

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