Young Man Wisdom

 

As of August 18th, the total numbers of COVID-19 cases in Sudan reached 12,582 (28 cases per 100,000 population) and with a death rate of 6.5% (812). If you look at the number of the daily positive cases and the positivity rate you will think that Sudan is driving the virus under control as you can see both indicators are trending down. But as we said previously, Sudan is not testing enough. You will notice from the second graph that the rate of daily testing is not stable and ranges from 1000 to less than 200 tests per day. For Sudan to truly be able to know the real size of infection rate, Sudan needs to do more than testing suspect cases. And to add insult to injury, due to the political instability, Sudan had many protests and crowd gatherings, which without doubt accelerated the spread of the virus. Furthermore, the government started to relax some measures that helped, to some extent, in confiding the virus to the state of Khartoum. Recently the government allowed bus travel line...

Since the being of the Pandemic, The WHO could not have stressed the importance of Testing as the core strategy to fight the spread of the disease. “We have a simple message for all countries, test, test, test,” Said the WHO Director Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. But why testing is important?   Testing is important for diagnosis so treatment can begin, also for isolating the infected persons to stop the spread of the disease and to do contact tracing and isolate exposed persons. The objective from Lockdown is/was to control the spread so hospitals have time to deal with the influx of patients while at the same time health authorities can have the time to invest in building testing capacity and contact tracing and isolation facilities. As no one knows exactly the number of people who are infected, testing plays a crucial part in providing a window on how the virus is spreading and where. This information is vital to the response, otherwise, you will be acting blindly and r...

The last time I talked about the number of cases was on May 9th. on that date, Sudan reached 1000 cases. And I was planning to write another piece when Sudan reached 2000 cases but due to the rapid increase in numbers of cases, I was not able to catch up. Now, The number of confirmed cases is 3138 and of those 121 expired (3.9%). The mortality rate has declined which I hope indicates more testing. The number of cases is doubling every five days. As I said before it is not a surprise considering the lack of social distancing. However, for some reason, the situation in Sudan is worst when compared to other countries in East Africa in terms of mortality and the number of cases. Considering that some of these countries did not go all the way with the lockdown policy as Sudan did. I hope the number of new cases will stabilise over the next few days but with Eid coming and current lack of political stability, it is unlikely that this will happen.

Today Sudan reached a milestone in this pandemic by confirming more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19. Khartoum state remains the epicentre of the virus but recently the number of cases in other states started to increase. It is not a surprise we reached this milestone, it was expected considering the continuous lack of effective social distancing and political instability. Despite the introduction of lock measures more than four weeks ago, the number of new cases continues to increase daily. And the logarithmic curve has not flattened yet. If this rate of daily new cases continues as it is, Sudan should brace itself for a big jump in cases are more likely more fatalities. The current pandemic demonstrated how fragile the health system is. The infrastructure for health surveillance, early detection, contact tracing and isolation almost not existing or it is not effective. By next week if the curve does not show any signs of slowing down Sudan should get ready for a crisis that Sudan has not...

As the situation of COVID-19 continues to develop, it is important to keep what is happening in Sudan within the perspective and context of Sudan’s regional circumstances rather than comparing Sudan to the gulf or European countries. Sudan situation is similar to other countries like Ethiopia or Rwanda. But it is important to consider and not to forget the political instability in Sudan currently and its impact on Sudan’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Ethiopia Population 93.88 % GDP on public health 2.2% Doctor:Population 0.03/1000 people Hospital beds 0.24/1000 people First case March 13, 2020 Declared state of emergency but did not impose the same level of restrictions as sounding countries Deaths 3   Sudan Population 34.85 % GDP on public health 1.3 % Doctor:Population 0.22/1000 people Hospital beds 0.7/1000 people First case March 13, 2020 Partial lockdown since March 26 Deaths 21 Rwanda Population 12.01 %...