How Senegal stretched its health care system to stop Covid-19

Rwanda, a country with the same population of Ohio, has emerged as an example of how to slow the spread of coronavirus, with only 1,500 cases reported so far. Besides initiating a lockdown, implementing free testing, and recruiting community health care workers, police, and college students to be contact tracers, officials also used "the same structure, same people, same infrastructure and laboratory diagnostics" that had been working to contain the spread of HIV.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, Taiwan – a country of nearly 24 million people – has reported less than 500 cases and only seven deaths, largely due to the rapid implementation of a public health emergency response plan. By successfully using a combination of quarantine measures, social pressure, technology, and consistent communication, the country was able to begin reopening in May.

As the COVID-19 pandemic picked up across the world, Senegal, taking lessons from its experiences with Ebola, acted quickly. Measures like hard travel restrictions and lockdowns, daily information briefings and broadcasts, subsidizing hotels for isolations and quarantine, fever checks at most public locations, and cheap and accessible testing. Key to all of this has been the localized context – understanding what will work best for Senegal citizens, especially those in remote areas.

Universities are breeding grounds for COVID-19. In August and September they had to figure out the best way to test, control, and contain a virus on campus. Across the country universities launched a plethora of methods: weekly testing, staggered testing, training student health ambassadors, and even a community court. This article highlights the endeavors of 5 universities.

Montana has largely been able to avoid the worst of the coronavirus pandemic by implementing very early measures – including a state of emergency, school closures, and social distancing protocols – before the virus had a chance to spread amongst the community. Having learned from how past communicable diseases spread throughout the state, such as whooping cough, health officials also quickly put a contact tracing effort into place. According to Dr. Laurel Desnick, Park County Health Officer, “Montana is still the safest place in the country.”

South Korea's national government took quick action and implemented sweeping policy changes that have helped the country better control the spread of Covid-19. Contact tracing and democratizing the creation of testing supplies were two key aspects, but a major influencer was how quickly the country set these actions into motion by centralizing their approach.

As the world continues to grapple with COVID-19, we’re also learning lessons from one another. For instance, Taiwan’s ability to have a designated Central Epidemic Command Center helped to coordinate a comprehensive response and keep their numbers low, and Iceland immediately partnered with a private company to scale their testing design. Germany built out their hospital capacity, which can now handle 10x what it needs, and South Korea developed over 500 testing stations around the country.

Several statewide measures allowed California to mitigate its surge of COVID-19 cases by acting early. The state issued a mandatory stay-at-home order, which included making face masks mandatory and shutting down public parks during the Easter holiday. In addition to restricting movement, California also made testing widely available and managed to produce a surplus of ventilators. Furthermore, many tech companies quickly adopted work-from-home measures. The thoroughness and early nature of these responses helped the state avoid a surge as seen in New York.

Several Asian nations have successfully slowed the spread of coronavirus and may now offer lessons for the U.S. and Europe. Although each took its own approach, commonalities included governmental oversight, early intervention in public policies and business, widespread testing, and information management.

When faced with the coronavirus pandemic, a number of countries around the world "opted for delayed containment strategies," but countries such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, which took the opposite approach, have seen more success with mitigating the spread. The governments in these countries implemented many aggressive initiatives that were aimed at widespread testing, restricted travel, and contact tracing.