generalspeaking

Awaiting the Novel Coronavirus's Worst-Onslaught

"We are wrong if we think this is not a children's disease."
"Experience tells us that when epidemics overwhelm health systems, the impact on children is deadly."
"They are the most vulnerable as other diseases and malnutrition go untreated."
World Vision

"[Nicaragua's  Sandinista government's response to the pandemic has been] perhaps the most erratic of any country in the world to date."
"If the government's senior leadership continues to ignore calls for strong mitigation efforts, the fragile public health infrastructure could collapse under the pressure of widespread infection."
Editorial, The Lancet

A television screen at the Palazzo Chigi in Rome shows a video conference between G20 leaders. Photograph: Palazzo Chigi press office/AFP via Getty Images

The world watches while Europe and North America struggle with the outcome of mass infections caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, wreaking havoc in Spain, Italy and the United States in particular, and every other country in between. These are nations with the most sophisticated medical systems, and health-care professionals whose skills are second to none. They are overworked, exhausted, fearful and under-equipped.

Although the world's scientific community has known for a very long time that a new, dread pandemic might be imminent, there were no preparations to meet the challenge.

It is mostly belatedly that other, far more vulnerable, countries of the world have begun trying to cope with an influx of coronavirus cases, with far fewer resources, trained professionals, equipped hospitals, educated publics and economic means to meet the onslaught of this deadly zoonotic from China. Densely populated cities in Africa, Asia and South America are just now beginning to get a glimpse of what the near future may hold in store for them, the poorest countries of the world community as the coronavirus pandemic makes its inroads.
Pakistan's first case of COVID came along near the end of February. A month later confirmed cases had reached 1,000, and in another week it was 2,000, and five days following the tally was 3,000. That total became 4,072 three days later. India, seven times more populous than its neighbour had its first case at the end of January, and recently reported 4,789 cases, slightly higher than Pakistan, along with 149 deaths in a population of 1.4 billion people.

The 84 million people populating Iran saw an official COVID total count of 57,000 at the end of last week, and over 4,000 deaths, while up to 500 people died after drinking methanol which rumour of methanol being a coronavirus miracle cure caused. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, refused assistance from global NGO Doctors Without Borders, claiming them to be spies, and nor has it accepted help proffered by the United States claiming the U.S. developed SARS-CoV-2 as a biological weapon.

Iran's spread could be attributed to its close ties with China when, following the epidemic in Wuhan, Mahan Air owned and operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps flew 55 flights weekly between Tehran and Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In its turn, Iran became a vector for the disease as Iranians travelled around the world, bringing their strain of the virus with them.

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega appears to have sequestered himself, much like Canada's Justin Trudeau, while his wife Rosario Murillo, vice-president of the nation, calls on Nicaraguans to take part in "Love in the time of COVID-19" parades. The country's Central American neighbours have instituted social-distancing measures and are concerned that should the virus engulf Central America, it will be Nicaragua that has invited its presence.

As for the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, the John Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health is concerned that a sole carrier of the cornavirus entering the camps would be certain to lead to a massive outbreak.

In Syria, the millions of internally displaced are ripe for infection, following Syria's President Bashar al-Assad's barrel bombing of hospitals and clinics, aided and abetted by Russia's air force helping to destroy dozens of hospitals in the governorate of Idlib province leaving the "internally displaced persons" camps vulnerable to the implacable spread of the novel coronavirus.

The desperation seen in the world's developed nations, will be a relative shower of cases in comparison to the deadly storm that awaits these potential world trouble-spots.