{UAH} COVID 19 DATA SITUATION IN UGANDA
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BY REMMY BAHATI
COVID 19 DATA SITUATION IN UGANDA
I'm not for or against the government; I actually appreciate efforts spearheaded by the ministry of Health to curb the problem save lives, and get Ugandans to work ASAP. I'm praying for their success because there is so much riding on decisions that only they can make . So what I'm about to say is strictly in the spirit of being constructive. The Government needs a plan with short, medium and long term objectives for which critical data is needed. .
We cannot report 54 cases without effective widespread mass testing to find out who has the virus. The tests that have so far been conducted only focus in the cities. Ugandans living in the rural areas cannot access hospitals and supplies. In America where I currently live, the numbers rapidly went from 15 to hundreds of thousands when they started testing in large numbers even as President Trump was down playing the scope of the problem.
Developed countries that have managed to keep their case counts and deaths tolls low or bring them way down, including Iceland, Germany and South Korea, have generally tested a greater proportion of their population and have been transparent about their data than the United States and Uganda.
But this virus will find everyone! It may start in the cities, but I can tell you that it is going to hit the rural areas. Don't be on the wrong side of this. This is all of us against the virus, not yellow or blue districts. And if we all don't act now, one day it will just be one big fire of infection.
I ask the government to use this period of lockdown to gather as much data as possible about who has the corona virus, where they live, what their ages and degrees of illness are, what the mortality rate is at what ages, and what other ailments or immune deficiencies they may have.
Right now we keep reading that more people have recovered and are less infections. But if we don't have a picture of the total number of people infected, that anecdotal evidence could be dangerously misleading. One district could, for example, be equipped to report and treat it's cases; b if the number of infections in that region for people under 25 is discovered through testing and data collection to be 25,000 (and not 54)— the picture will look dangerously different.
Reporting the real figures and letting data drive the response to the crisis is pivotal. The President, should reassure the people that his Ministry's pronouncements are based on science and the strategic logic of a plan, and he will be able to bring the whole country along with him.
Right now, the Government's response and our immediate future are inextricably intertwined. They need to rise above what sustained them in power during the last 37 years - dividing, misleading and impugning experts and the deep state – and give the country what it so desperately needs and craves now: a data-based plan of action. It's especially critical for finding those people who may be inadvertently spreading the virus without showing symptoms.
Having said that, I will go through some important considerations.proposals.
Following through on extensive testing will require a massive increase in government funding, huge numbers of workers trained to administer the tests, and the coordination of raw materials, manufacturing, and delivery across the entire country. It's a costly, brute-force approach. But it may be the only way out of the expensive and blunt measures already deployed in Africa and other countries to control the pandemic, from social distancing to shelter-in-place orders.
What must bother most Ugandans on the question of sheltering at home are the basic questions: is this what is best for me and my family;? Are my kids safe? Will my savings last,if I have any? When will my children go back to school? When will I realistically be able to get back to work?
Where are we going to get most of the funding from?
Suppose Members of Parliament opted not to take the twenty million shillings that each will receive from the ten billion shillings allocated for combating the Corona virus? If all 426 members of Parliament returned this money to our treasury, perhaps we could begin to find our own solution to this problem.
Suppose we did what some African countries have done and slashed the salaries of the most highly paid public officials in the nation? Gabon, Senegal, Rwanda and others have made arrangements to provide food subsidies to the poorest and suspend payment of electricity and water bills for a couple of months. Other countries are paying their citizens to stay at home; what is Uganda doing?
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is almost perfectly optimized to infect huge swaths of the population in Uganda. For one, it can spread directly and easily between people in close contact. Yet the symptoms of Covid 19 can be confusing, varying from person to person, making it tricky to identify suspected cases. Meanwhile, asymptomatic carriers of the total number infected — can spread the virus unwittingly for weeks, triggering outbreaks in their wake.
While most can fight off the infection on their own, an epidemic like the one the US is facing with hundreds of thousands of infected people means tens of thousands will need to be hospitalized. Those patients in urgent or critical care can then spread the virus to health workers - a particular problem because of the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) – that could end up sidelining medical professionals and further strain the capacity of the health system to care for the sick.
And since it's a new virus, there is no cure , vaccine or widespread immunity. Controlling the spread of the pandemic, then, demands finding the infected and isolating them until they can no longer spread the disease, alongside broader measures like social distancing. With an untold number of asymptomatic carriers, the only option to find out who truly has the virus is to test.
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-- COVID 19 DATA SITUATION IN UGANDA
I'm not for or against the government; I actually appreciate efforts spearheaded by the ministry of Health to curb the problem save lives, and get Ugandans to work ASAP. I'm praying for their success because there is so much riding on decisions that only they can make . So what I'm about to say is strictly in the spirit of being constructive. The Government needs a plan with short, medium and long term objectives for which critical data is needed. .
We cannot report 54 cases without effective widespread mass testing to find out who has the virus. The tests that have so far been conducted only focus in the cities. Ugandans living in the rural areas cannot access hospitals and supplies. In America where I currently live, the numbers rapidly went from 15 to hundreds of thousands when they started testing in large numbers even as President Trump was down playing the scope of the problem.
Developed countries that have managed to keep their case counts and deaths tolls low or bring them way down, including Iceland, Germany and South Korea, have generally tested a greater proportion of their population and have been transparent about their data than the United States and Uganda.
But this virus will find everyone! It may start in the cities, but I can tell you that it is going to hit the rural areas. Don't be on the wrong side of this. This is all of us against the virus, not yellow or blue districts. And if we all don't act now, one day it will just be one big fire of infection.
I ask the government to use this period of lockdown to gather as much data as possible about who has the corona virus, where they live, what their ages and degrees of illness are, what the mortality rate is at what ages, and what other ailments or immune deficiencies they may have.
Right now we keep reading that more people have recovered and are less infections. But if we don't have a picture of the total number of people infected, that anecdotal evidence could be dangerously misleading. One district could, for example, be equipped to report and treat it's cases; b if the number of infections in that region for people under 25 is discovered through testing and data collection to be 25,000 (and not 54)— the picture will look dangerously different.
Reporting the real figures and letting data drive the response to the crisis is pivotal. The President, should reassure the people that his Ministry's pronouncements are based on science and the strategic logic of a plan, and he will be able to bring the whole country along with him.
Right now, the Government's response and our immediate future are inextricably intertwined. They need to rise above what sustained them in power during the last 37 years - dividing, misleading and impugning experts and the deep state – and give the country what it so desperately needs and craves now: a data-based plan of action. It's especially critical for finding those people who may be inadvertently spreading the virus without showing symptoms.
Having said that, I will go through some important considerations.proposals.
Following through on extensive testing will require a massive increase in government funding, huge numbers of workers trained to administer the tests, and the coordination of raw materials, manufacturing, and delivery across the entire country. It's a costly, brute-force approach. But it may be the only way out of the expensive and blunt measures already deployed in Africa and other countries to control the pandemic, from social distancing to shelter-in-place orders.
What must bother most Ugandans on the question of sheltering at home are the basic questions: is this what is best for me and my family;? Are my kids safe? Will my savings last,if I have any? When will my children go back to school? When will I realistically be able to get back to work?
Where are we going to get most of the funding from?
Suppose Members of Parliament opted not to take the twenty million shillings that each will receive from the ten billion shillings allocated for combating the Corona virus? If all 426 members of Parliament returned this money to our treasury, perhaps we could begin to find our own solution to this problem.
Suppose we did what some African countries have done and slashed the salaries of the most highly paid public officials in the nation? Gabon, Senegal, Rwanda and others have made arrangements to provide food subsidies to the poorest and suspend payment of electricity and water bills for a couple of months. Other countries are paying their citizens to stay at home; what is Uganda doing?
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is almost perfectly optimized to infect huge swaths of the population in Uganda. For one, it can spread directly and easily between people in close contact. Yet the symptoms of Covid 19 can be confusing, varying from person to person, making it tricky to identify suspected cases. Meanwhile, asymptomatic carriers of the total number infected — can spread the virus unwittingly for weeks, triggering outbreaks in their wake.
While most can fight off the infection on their own, an epidemic like the one the US is facing with hundreds of thousands of infected people means tens of thousands will need to be hospitalized. Those patients in urgent or critical care can then spread the virus to health workers - a particular problem because of the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) – that could end up sidelining medical professionals and further strain the capacity of the health system to care for the sick.
And since it's a new virus, there is no cure , vaccine or widespread immunity. Controlling the spread of the pandemic, then, demands finding the infected and isolating them until they can no longer spread the disease, alongside broader measures like social distancing. With an untold number of asymptomatic carriers, the only option to find out who truly has the virus is to test.
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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"
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