非洲国家新冠肺炎疫情防控的基础与挑战

Foundations and Challenges of Prevention and Control of COVID-19 in African Countries

2020年初新冠肺炎疫情爆发并快速蔓延,亚洲、欧洲和北美地区相继成为疫情重灾区。截至2020年4月中旬,全球确诊病例超过240万,非洲病例超过2万。由于疫情早期对输入性病例的防控出现漏洞,导致不少来自欧洲的病毒携带者在毫无防护的情况下流入非洲国家,成为当地疫情初期的主要病例和病毒社区传播的主要传播源。相比较而言,较低的国际流动性和滞后的病毒检测能力被认为是非洲确诊病例数较少的主要原因。然而,鉴于新冠病毒的传播特征和非洲国家国情,国际社会普遍预估非洲疫情的爆发已是高概率事件,随着大多数国家获得病毒检测试剂并开始加大检测力度,感染数量可能在短期内出现较大幅度增加。医疗系统薄弱、生活物资短缺、政府动员能力有限、部分地区政局不稳以及疫情衍生社会危机对非洲国家的疫情防控构成重大挑战。国际社会秉持"人类命运共同体"之理念携手合作积极援助对非洲国家疫情防控和全球疫情治理至关重要。

As COVID-19 broke out and spread rapidly in early 2020,Asia,Europe and North America have become the worst-hit regions of the pandemic disease.By mid-April,more than 2.4 million cases had been confirmed globally and more than 20,000 in Africa.Due to loopholes in the prevention and control of imported cases in the early stage of pandemic,many virus carriers from Europe flowed into African countries without protective measures,and became the main African infections and spreaders.Relatively low international mobility and delayed virus detection capabilities are considered as major reasons for the low number of confirmed cases in Africa.However,given the transmission charac:teristics of the new corona virus and the national conclitions of African countries,the international community generally estimated that the outbreak of the epidemic in Africa is of high probability.As most African countries obtain virus detection reagents and begin to strengthen virus detection,the number of infections may increase significantly in the short term.Weak medical systems,shortage of living materials,limited government mobilization capacity,political instability in parts of the region,and the outbreak-derived social crisis have posed as major challenges for the prevention and control of the epidemic in African countries.Thus it is of vital importance for the international society,with the concept of " community of shared future for mankind",to work together to actively assist African countries to prevent and control the epidemic and to attain global epidemic management.