Resources, ideas, and guidelines around the COVID19 pandemic
What works in other parts of the world might not work in Africa.
Let us build a region-specific resource kit.
Please add comments, suggestions, questions to this doc. They will be integrated and sorted on the go.
Offline mitigation strategies 3
Summary
Affected African countries - map provided by WHO: who.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0c9b3a8b68d0437a8cf28581e9c063a9
Essentials
- Stay calm
- The virus spreads through air droplets dispersed during sneezing and coughing, also direct skin contact
- Wash your hands frequently
- Keep a minimum physical distance (1.5 meters) to other people
- Check on friends and relatives, esp. elderly and vulnerable people – remotely if possible
- Ask if anyone needs assistance: food supply, social care, …
- Collect and share information on best practices
- Follow general as well as COVID19-specific hygiene guidance
- afro.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus-covid-19 (website)
- Africa CDC Guidance on Community Social Distancing for COVID-19 (pdf)
- Lessons-learned from the Ebola outbreak: politica.think.bm/2020/03/covid-19-lessons-from-west-africas-battle-against-ebola/
Online
Ensure that #internet providers can keep up and improve their services - #Connectivity is already affected. >> http://africa-internet.com
- Collaborate online e.g. coronavirustechhandbook.com/
- Follow hashtags
- combinations of #Africa [and] #coronavirus [or] #COVID19
- #CoronaVirusAfrica
- Mobilize resources and transfer knowledge collected online to offline
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- List of stakeholders: info.africarxiv.org/stakeholders/
- Add more at docs.google.com/spreadsheets/…/
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Offline mitigation strategies
- Ask relatives, friends, and neighbors if they need help with anything
- Safety first - keep your physical distance (2-3 meters)
- Buy/collect vegetable and crop seeds
- Plant if you have a plot of land
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Q&A
Ask any question you might have
Report on specific challenges you are experiencing or have observed or heard about
- How do you self-isolate in a squatter camp / slum / shanty town?
- What affordable and feasible hygiene measures can people apply?
- What tips and best practices can be suggested?
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- How can you deliver resources to self-isolating individuals if there is poor road infrastructure and no stable delivery mechanisms?
- Who do you reach out to for reliable information and advice?
Country responses
- Add link to spreadsheet
- Collect relevant documents per country on github
- Resources and info that is country specific
- Translate into local languages
What you can do
Researchers
- Submit any COVID-19 relevant research and information toi AfricArXiv as a text document (preprint, postprint), presentation (PDF, PPT), infographics (PNG, PDF)
- Make lists of available research equipment that might be needed to support authorities
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Makerspaces
- Make a list of the things you can provide (through 3D printing or other things)
- Reach out locally to ask what people need most and see if you can provide that utilizing and deploying Open Source hardware
- Try and encourage projects like this: https://hackaday.com/2020/03/12/ultimate-medical-hackathon-how-fast-can-we-design-and-deploy-an-open-source-ventilator/
- Tests are pcr based, is there open source hardware useful? + isdo the test procedure open?.
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Citizens
- Ask questions: what do you need to know?
- What resources and information would you like to get?
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Relevant resources
Africa-specific and globally relevant
! Please note that any information collected at this early stage of investigations has not been quality-checked or otherwise reviewed for accuracy.
Need to coordinate this; ideas?
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| Africa-specific | Globally relevant and applicable in Africa |
|---|---|
| * afro.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus-covid-19 |
- africacdc.org
- covid-19-africa.sen.ovh/
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Africa
-
pollyz.wiki/index.php/
… - …
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- …|* coronavirustechhandbook.com/
- weileizeng.github.io/Open-Source-COVID-19/
- covid-19.alibabacloud.com/
- github.com/dialoguemd/covid-19
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Documents
- Africa CDC Guidance on Community Social Distancing for COVID-19 (pdf download)
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Todos
Infographics
- collection of infographics on hygiene measures to avoid infection
- provided by graphic designers and scientists
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- Collect here examples
Research labs
- provide a platform where Research labs can volunteer to run PCR screenings on COVID19 DNA/RNA samples to investigate for mutants and derivatives
- Coronavirus ‘rapid test kits’ to be made in Senegal - BBC News youtube.com/watch?v=BnczXc0g_IE
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Software & Code
- makerspaces, coding communities and innovation hubs on the continent to design immediate response hardware and software
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Translations into regional languages
- info.africarxiv.org/languages/
- Translate all collected information from and to English/French / Arabic / Swahili / Yoruba / … infographics for illiterate ppl, those that speak local languages and kids
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Survey (Google Form)
To collect information from scientists, makerspaces, coding communities
- Make that information immediately available to the public (Google Spreadsheet, open for comments)
- Things to ask
- Org name
- Contact email
- Twitter, Facebook, ORCID, other social accounts
- Skills
- Comment section
Credentials
License: CC-BY 4.0: COVID19-Africa-Response-Alliance
Contributing individuals and organisations
Names of organisations and individuals - if you want to be cited/tagged
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Your name or that of your organisation
- AfricArXiv, africarxiv.org
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Logos
(Feel free to add yours)
