How to end the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown safely

Columnists

How to end the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown safely

Wednesday, April 29, 2020 21:55

By ABDI MOHAMED |

There is so much uncertainty about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people's lives and livelihoods. The world economy will experience the worst recession since the great depression.

The world will never be the same again, we will have to adapt to a new living. There is so much anxiety when we will go back to our previous lifestyle.

A lot will depend on the effectiveness of the containment measures, development of drugs for treatment and more importantly a vaccine that works. This can take up to 18 months or even more.

How do we open the economy safely? The following things need to happen before we can even think of opening in phases.

Increase the testing capacity

Health Secretary Mutahi Kagwe announced that our capacity for testing will be expanded from the current (10) to cover at least one laboratory in each county.

This increased capacity will not only need to be supported with the personnel, the PPE, training and the reagents required to do the tests but build data infrastructure for the rapid sharing of results.

Counties can do community-wide interventions that focus on large populations and then move to case-based interventions that target and isolate individual people who are infected.

There must be sufficient capacity to test patients in hospitals, healthcare workers and essential workers who have a role in health and public safety and close contacts of confirmed cases. This is the most important investment we need to make if we are to ease the current measures in place.

Comprehensive Covid-19 surveillance system

The second most important capacity to build before easing restriction is contact tracing and isolation and quarantine. When a new case of Covid-19 is diagnosed, the patient should be isolated either at home or in a hospital, depending on the level of care he or she requires.

The same will apply to the contacts. Modern technology will make the process more effective and faster but there must be the public health workforce to conduct case finding and contact tracing.

We have many healthcare workers who are currently jobless and can work closely with community healthcare workers. There must be a technological tool that will enable rapid data entry, reporting, and support for isolation, quarantine, and safe community-based treatment of affected individuals.

We are aware that most Kenyans in urban centres may wish to recover in a government institution that has been repurposed rather than risk infecting family members rather than pay out of pocket when they don't know where the next meal is coming from.

Isolation and quarantine away from home should not be mandatory or compelled by force for those whose houses allow them to be safely quarantined.

Increase the supply of personal protective equipment Necessity is the mother of invention and we have seen how our public and private textile manufacturers have shifted their production into masks and PPE.

For us to ease the restriction, the supply chain should be able to reliably distribute sufficient masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment to protect health care workers from infection.