ABSTRACT
In South Sudan, all schools and churches have been closed to promote social distancing. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a three-week total lockdown of his country’s 57 million citizens. At the large regional hospital in Kisumu, Kenya, teams of health workers have set up tents to provide information on COVID-19 and to take visitors’ temperatures and log their travel histories before they enter the hospital. As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, causing tens of thousands of deaths and massive economic disruption, Africa has so far been largely spared the kind of impact that has thrown China, the United States, and Europe into chaos. Most African countries remain woefully unprepared for what’s coming. Support is urgently needed for real-time COVID-19 surveillance systems and for surveys to determine the scope of the epidemic and to inform decisions about how to respond.
