On December 31, 2019, there was an outbreak of a respiratory
illness in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China1
. By January 7,
2020, the illness was identified as a Novel Coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) and on 11 February 2020, the World Health
Organization (WHO) officially named it as COVID-19.
Coronaviruses constitute a huge family of viruses that cause
upper-respiratory tract infections. There are hundreds of
coronaviruses, with the majority occurring among animals
including cats, bats, pigs, and camels2
. They sometimes,
however, occur among persons—called a spillover event—
and can cause disease. Three of the coronaviruses cause
serious morbidity and mortality2
. One of them is the novel
coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-192.
COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by WHO on
March 11, 20203
. As of May 09 2020, 215 countries, areas,
or territories4
, out of the 241 recognised by the WHO5
, had
recorded cases as the virus. A total of 3,855,812 confirmed
cases and 265,862 deaths were recorded. In SSA, 39,248
cases were recorded with 1,311 deaths4
.