Nigeria Center for Disease Control Director General Chikwe Ihekweazu is doing his best to reassure constituents that his team is closely following the spread of the deadly coronavirus in China and monitoring to see if it makes its way all the over to Nigeria. His Twitter feed is filled with reassuring posts about how the government has mobilized epidemic intelligence teams and initiated inter-agency task forces to be on alert for anyone who demonstrates the symptoms of this new, mysterious virus.
Ihekweazu is right to be worried.
The last time China experienced a similar near-pandemic outbreak was back in 2002 when SARS emerged in the southern province of Guangdong. Back then, though, China’s presence in Nigeria, and Africa in general, was minimal so there was no reason to be worried about the deadly virus making its way to the continent. But now, with thousands of people traveling daily between China and Africa on all those new direct flights, there is a real possibility this coronavirus could make its way to Africa.
China has the financial and technical resources to fight this new, mysterious virus. Additionally, its authoritarian political system permits the Chinese government to exert much more control over its population than would be possible in any African country. Most African governments, including Nigeria’s, would likely struggle mightily to contain an outbreak.
So, we all need to hope that China is able to repeat what it did in the early 2000s during the SARS outbreak and bring this new virus under control or else… well, let’s not think about “or else” because the consequences are just too terrifying to consider at this early stage.
