Month: July 2020

This blog was first published in Brookings Future Development Blog. The authors are Jiaqi Zhang, Justice Nonvignon, and Wenhui Mao. The first two COVID-19 cases in Ghana were confirmed on March 12, 2020. As of July 23, 2020, there have been 32,969 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 168 deaths. The virus has disproportionately affected southern Ghana—52 percent of cases are in Greater Accra (Table 1). With a population of about 30 million—the 10th largest in sub-Saharan Africa—Ghana now has the fourth highest number of cases in sub-Saharan Africa (after South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria). The reason is that Ghana has one of the highest testing rates when compared to other African countries. Table 1. Half of Ghana’s COVID-19 cases are in and around the capital city Region Cases Greater Accra 17,152 Ashanti…

This blog was first published in Brookings Future Development Blog. The authors are Ipchita Bharali, Preeti Kumar, and Sakthivel Selvaraj. The first COVID-19 case in India was detected on January 30, the same day that WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern. India went into lockdown almost two months later. On June 8, after 10 weeks of lockdown, India started a phased reopening of its economy. With Unlock 1.0, the country is trying to balance attempts to revive the economy while dealing with increasing caseloads and new hotspots. On June 30, official COVID-19 cases stood at over 585,000, and more than 17,500 deaths (Figure 1). While recovery rates have improved to 60 percent and the death rate is relatively low considering that India is the fourth most-impacted country…

This blog was first published in Brookings Future Development Blog. The authors are Siddharth Dixit, Yewande Kofoworola Ogundeji, and Obinna Onwujekwe. On January 23, 2020, the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee advised that “all countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread of 2019-nCoV infection, and to share full data with WHO.” On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency of international concern. Is Nigeria prepared to respond effectively to pandemics? In 2017, during the WHO’s Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of IHR core capacities (an independent, collaborative multi-sectoral effort to assess a country’s capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to public health risks), Nigeria scored poorly both…