The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak has been setting new ground rules and disrupting more as the world tries to accommodate it. Laboratories are rushing to find a solution with both Israeli and Chinese scientists announcing that they were within weeks of finding a vaccine. But in the meantime, many countries are in panic mode; large gatherings have been banned, schools closed and many flights to China halted. Mercifully, Africa that many feared (and expected) to be badly hit has been largely spared with only 10 cases reported. Some news sites seem to be very disappointed and are asking why Africa has been by-passed by the virus. Some even went as far as suggesting that African countries lacked testing capabilities and could not detect the virus. What they fail to mention is that many African countries are well prepared. In Rwanda, for instance, Kigali International Airport is equipped with thermographic cameras and doesn’t need hand-held temperature monitors, isolation centres are being readied, major conferences have been postponed and the national carrier Rwandair stopped flights to China. All that come with costly consequences and it is estimated that African airlines have lost over $400 million due to COVID-19, and that is just the beginning. However, some people have come up with some intelligent interpretations as to the cause of the outbreak; it was expected. A pandemic breaks out every century and it is not a coincidence. In 1720 it was the Plague, in 1820, Cholera followed by Spanish flu in 1920. So it was only natural that a hundred years later, it was time for COVID-19 to knock on the door to test the human spirit.
