How to kill a contagion

During the 2014 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in several countries of Africa, China sent medical experts to help, and to gather information. Some of what they learned from that experience shaped their successful response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Now Nigeria and the rest of the world have to look to China’s low fatality figures and […]

During the 2014 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in several countries of Africa, China sent medical experts to help, and to gather information. Some of what they learned from that experience shaped their successful response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Now Nigeria and the rest of the world have to look to China’s low fatality figures and methods to contain the pandemic.

When the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) pandemic broke out in West Africa in 2014, after years of recurrent cases in Central Africa, where it was first discovered in 1976, China sent a contingent of 480 medical staff and an elite unit of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to Liberia to fight the scourge.

What is now obvious is that China might have used that opportunity to prepare containment methods in case of future outbreaks within its own borders.

Then the Chinese team in Liberia not only treated Ebola patients but also built a 100-bed treatment centre in Liberia in one month, making it the first of such facility to be built in the three countries then affected by the virus.

This feat would be replicated when the country built two emergency hospitals in Wuhan and other neighbouring Hubei Provinces, the epicentre of the new Coronavirus, within ten days.

The two-floor facilities with capacity for 1, 000 patients each, were built from scratch using pre-fabricated materials as the country battled the deadly disease.

The 2014–2016 EVD outbreak in West Africa claimed some 5, 000 lives in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. China is still supporting Congo in the fight against the virus.

According to WHO, EVD, formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates.

WHO said the virus is transmitted to people from wild animals such as bats and spread through direct contact with blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons, and with contaminated surfaces and materials (e.g. beddings, clothing).

Apart from making a $123 million donation to 13 African countries and international organisations to fight Ebola, China sent aid workers and health experts to Africa who conducted series of tests and took reports back to China.

A Chinese drug company with military ties, Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd, sent several thousand doses of an experimental Ebola drug to Africa after clinical trials there.

The experience from the EVD outbreak and that China had gained from the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which claimed about 774 lives in over 15 countries better prepared China for COVID-19.

But China is not the only country to have learnt from the EVD outbreak. Nigeria, which had a taste of that pandemic when an infected Liberian national, Patrick Sawyer arrived Lagos and infected a number of people at a hospital, also got a kick from handling that crisis.

Director General of Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu said the Ebola experience in Nigeria helped the country prepare for the current Covid-19 outbreak in identifying, diagnosing and isolating cases, part of which was used in the first index case involving an Italian in Lagos.

China’s relatively low fatality rate

For a country with 1.4 billion people, and where the first outbreak of the disease in December, 2019, was recorded, many are wondering how China managed to keep a low fatality figure?

So far, the virus has infected 1.4 million people in 160 countries. China and Italy, Iran, South Korea, USA and Spain are among countries with the highest number of confirmed cases.

With over 17, 000 deaths in Italy, the country has overtaken China in the mortality rate. China has recorded 3, 331 deaths from 81, 740 cases.

Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), told CGTN that the world could share and learn from experiences.

How China is defeating the virus

China ramped up emergency responses by creating makeshift hospitals and sick bays in public places using shelter hospitals, international conference centres and Wuhan’s Exhibition Centre, producing up to 3, 400 bed spaces.

After identifying the index case in Wuhan, Hubei Province, between December and January 2020 China cordoned off the live animal market in Wuhan, believed to be the source of the virus.

The country showed swift emergency preparedness with massive deployment of medical staff drawn from across the country to areas most affected. Serious disease awareness and surveillance protocols, quick quarantines of persons with symptoms, data tracking systems for contacts, fast testing systems, electronic prescription refills, massive deployment of ventilators, facial masks and handwash/sanitisers were all enforced in public places. Schools and public places were placed on lockdown as online study and shopping increased in the country.

China’s use of facial recognition technology for surveillance at airports, train stations, shops and other places helped track people’s travel history and identify potential covid-19 cases.

“I think one of the things we have learned through these various experiences is the criticality of global cooperation to work together to mobilize the world scientific community to address all the different aspects, the development of diagnostics, the development of therapeutics, the development of vaccines, the understanding of epidemiology, that’s critical,” Hatchett said.

Dr Bruce Aylward, a physician and epidemiologist, who led the WHO delegation to China at the peak of the spread of the virus, said, “Everything we see since leaving China is consistent to what we saw in the country, and what one would expect. But it is very, very impressive and still is the standard for the rest of the world,” he said.

Aylward warned against complacency were people drop their guard against the “concerning virus that can wreak havoc and which could start to spread again.”

“One of the things that impressed me about China was that as I spoke to governors and mayors in different provinces, even though cases were coming down, they were till building beds, buying respirators, because they said, ‘look, if this happens again or cases start to increase as children go back to school, factories reopen, we have to be prepared for it,’” he said.

Although largely unaffected for months after the cases in other countries, Africa finally tested the Covid-19 pandemic in early March when a 60-year-old German tourist arrived Egypt. Presently, thousands have been infected across 40 countries.

As concerns over the fast spreading and mutating virus mount on the continent, being one of the regions with weak health and medical care, experts believe Africa must adopt China’s methods to flatten the pandemic curve.

“Today, we share experience on how we should also put ourselves together in managing this kind of emergencies following the footsteps of China,” Charles Onunaiju of the Centre for China Studies in Abuja, Nigeria, said.

As China gradually exits the dangerous curve of the pandemic and life beginning to return to normal in Wuhan and other cities, it is hoped that the country would extend its attention across the world and Africa in particular with help.

With dozens of Chinese medical experts are on their way to Nigeria to help in containing the spread of the virus and thousands of test kits are being shipped from the country to Nigeria and other countries of the world, perhaps Nigeria can adopt some of the techniques China used to stem the tide.