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COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures
The geographic and economic characteristics unique to island nations create a different set of conditions for, and responses to, the spread of a pandemic compared with those of mainland countries. Here, we aimed to describe the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the potential condit...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8919133/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35277427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006821 |
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author | Kousi, Timokleia Vivacqua, Daniela Dalal, Jyoti James, Ananthu Câmara, Daniel Cardoso Portela Botero Mesa, Sara Chimbetete, Cleophas Impouma, Benido Williams, George Sie Mboussou, Franck Mlanda, Tamayi Bukhari, Arish Keiser, Olivia Abbate, Jessica Lee Hofer, Cristina Barroso |
author_facet | Kousi, Timokleia Vivacqua, Daniela Dalal, Jyoti James, Ananthu Câmara, Daniel Cardoso Portela Botero Mesa, Sara Chimbetete, Cleophas Impouma, Benido Williams, George Sie Mboussou, Franck Mlanda, Tamayi Bukhari, Arish Keiser, Olivia Abbate, Jessica Lee Hofer, Cristina Barroso |
author_sort | Kousi, Timokleia |
collection | PubMed |
description | The geographic and economic characteristics unique to island nations create a different set of conditions for, and responses to, the spread of a pandemic compared with those of mainland countries. Here, we aimed to describe the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the potential conditions and responses affecting variation in the burden of infections and severe disease burden, across the six island nations of the WHO’s Africa region: Cabo Verde, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, São Tomé e Príncipe and Seychelles. We analysed the publicly available COVID-19 data on confirmed cases and deaths from the beginning of the pandemic through 29 November 2020. To understand variation in the course of the pandemic in these nations, we explored differences in their economic statuses, healthcare expenditures and facilities, age and sex distributions, leading health risk factors, densities of the overall and urban populations and the main industries in these countries. We also reviewed the non-pharmaceutical response measures implemented nationally. We found that the burden of SARS-CoV-2 infection was reduced by strict early limitations on movement and biased towards nations where detection capacity was higher, while the burden of severe COVID-19 was skewed towards countries that invested less in healthcare and those that had older populations and greater prevalence of key underlying health risk factors. These findings highlight the need for Africa’s island nations to invest more in healthcare and in local testing capacity to reduce the need for reliance on border closures that have dire consequences for their economies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8919133 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89191332022-03-14 COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures Kousi, Timokleia Vivacqua, Daniela Dalal, Jyoti James, Ananthu Câmara, Daniel Cardoso Portela Botero Mesa, Sara Chimbetete, Cleophas Impouma, Benido Williams, George Sie Mboussou, Franck Mlanda, Tamayi Bukhari, Arish Keiser, Olivia Abbate, Jessica Lee Hofer, Cristina Barroso BMJ Glob Health Analysis The geographic and economic characteristics unique to island nations create a different set of conditions for, and responses to, the spread of a pandemic compared with those of mainland countries. Here, we aimed to describe the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the potential conditions and responses affecting variation in the burden of infections and severe disease burden, across the six island nations of the WHO’s Africa region: Cabo Verde, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, São Tomé e Príncipe and Seychelles. We analysed the publicly available COVID-19 data on confirmed cases and deaths from the beginning of the pandemic through 29 November 2020. To understand variation in the course of the pandemic in these nations, we explored differences in their economic statuses, healthcare expenditures and facilities, age and sex distributions, leading health risk factors, densities of the overall and urban populations and the main industries in these countries. We also reviewed the non-pharmaceutical response measures implemented nationally. We found that the burden of SARS-CoV-2 infection was reduced by strict early limitations on movement and biased towards nations where detection capacity was higher, while the burden of severe COVID-19 was skewed towards countries that invested less in healthcare and those that had older populations and greater prevalence of key underlying health risk factors. These findings highlight the need for Africa’s island nations to invest more in healthcare and in local testing capacity to reduce the need for reliance on border closures that have dire consequences for their economies. BMJ Publishing Group 2022-03-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8919133/ /pubmed/35277427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006821 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Analysis Kousi, Timokleia Vivacqua, Daniela Dalal, Jyoti James, Ananthu Câmara, Daniel Cardoso Portela Botero Mesa, Sara Chimbetete, Cleophas Impouma, Benido Williams, George Sie Mboussou, Franck Mlanda, Tamayi Bukhari, Arish Keiser, Olivia Abbate, Jessica Lee Hofer, Cristina Barroso COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title | COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title_full | COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title_fullStr | COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title_full_unstemmed | COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title_short | COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
title_sort | covid-19 pandemic in africa’s island nations during the first 9 months: a descriptive study of variation in patterns of infection, severe disease, and response measures |
topic | Analysis |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8919133/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35277427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006821 |
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