Lessons Learned After Two Years of Living with COVID-19: A Special Focus on Findings from Multidisciplinary Pan African Studies

Abstract

The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has spread globally, and Africa is not excluded. The disease threatens to render millions of people poor. This current review study focuses on key areas such as its clinical features, epidemiology, genetics, spillover hosts and socio-economic impacts two years after the report of the fi rst cases in Africa. Internet search was conducted, and scientifi c papers were selected using the following criteria: papers reporting on the key aspects in Africa, papers with complete information, literature review papers were excluded, papers with only abstracts were not considered, papers on other aspects which are not subject of interest were not eligible. Based on the stated criteria, 54 papers were retained. After two years of living with the pandemic, African researchers acquired some lessons. They made some recommendations for future pandemics as such: a) the experience of Africa could serve as a lesson for the global population based on its long history of living with coronaviruses and dealing with them; b) there is a need to reinforce the health care system in preparation for future pandemics of this magnitude as well as not to neglected other important existing diseases; c) the imposition of mitigation policies such as lockdown should be adapted to the local situation of each country to avoid long term consequences such as food insecurity, adolescent pregnancy, gender-based violence; c) the regions with a high diversity of bat hosts and other animal species should be regularly monitored for the emergence of novel coronaviruses, d) fi nancial support should be made available to promote scientifi c research in Africa. As COVID-19 remains a priority disease, the lessons learned after two years of living with it should prepare the continent for responding holistically to future pandemics.