(March 10 – 17, 2020)
“Mother, please stay at home!” exclaimed the Health Minister of the Republic of Moldova after announcing 23 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the daily pressbriefing on March 16, 2020. Elderly people are at risk in this developing country, as working migrants return home from countries like Italy and Great Britain, while religious gatherings continue to be held. The authorities have been struggling to tackle what now is a worldwide pandemic since the first officially registered case was brought to Moldova from Milano, Italy, in early March.
Worldwide, the official number of people infected with COVID-19 has reached 179,000, with almost 80,000 new confirmed cases since last week’s DevelopmentAid report. This rapid escalation of cases has led to 154 out of 195 countries being affected by the virus. Almost 7500 have people lost their lives, with that number expected to grow in the following period due to the increasing number of patients, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The dynamics of the new versus cured patients prove that during last week the virus spread five times more quickly. Thus, for each cured patient, five people were diagnosed with the virus according to data from the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases mapping by Johns Hopkins University.
More than half of the confirmed cases are from outside China, as is the number of deaths caused by the virus. At the same time, almost 82,000 patients worldwide have recovered from COVID-19.
The risk of the spread and the impact of the COVID-19 remains “very high” across the globe. The WHO Director General has called for an urgent escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing – the backbone of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As I keep saying, all countries must take a comprehensive approach. But the most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate. You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected. We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case.”
Meanwhile, in Moldova, after closing the borders to foreign citizens, local government plans to introduce a state of emergency in order to prevent the further spread of the virus. Schools, universities, open markets and parks have been closed across the country. Moldova’s health system is facing something it has never tackled before. Those who are not taking the situation seriously will face fines and even criminal charges. Similar lockdown measures have been taken by a number of developing countries such asKazakhstan and Armenia but rich and prosperous areas, such as 48 US states, with stronger health systems, are also declaring an emergency.
Aid measures
With countries closing their borders and under lockdown, businesses are facing challenges. Thus, world services trade growth continued to weaken toward the end of 2019 and into the first quarter of 2020 according to the WTO’s Services Trade Barometer, released on 11 March 2020. This indicator does not yet fully capture the economic impact of the COVID-19 virus and is likely to decline further in the coming months. Across Europe and the US, bars and restaurants are closing their seating areas in order to minimize human-to-human contact. Some businesses are allowing employees to work remotely while others struggle to keep up production.
The first and only state aid measure so far in the European Union was approved by the European Commission on March 12. Thus, €12 million will be disbursed to the Danish aid scheme to compensate organizers for the damage suffered due to the cancellation of large events for more than 1,000 participants due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The EC has established a dedicated contact point for Member States to provide them with guidance on possibilities under EU rules.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has unveiled a €1 billion “Solidarity package” for businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the countries of its operation. EBRD, which is investing in 38 emerging economies, “will set up aresilience framework to provide financing for existing EBRD clients with strong business fundamentals experiencing temporary credit difficulties”.
Misinformation about the COVID-19 coronavirus has also raised concerns among donor organizations. UK aid will fund a new international push to challenge dangerous fake news about coronavirus. According to the pressrelease, DFID’s £500,000 support will go to the Humanitarian-to-Humanitarian (H2H) Network which has extensive experience of addressing the spread of misinformation during epidemics. Thus, journalists will be trained to use friendly and trustworthy language while some organizations will be helped to fight fake news about the coronavirus, as well as scams.
The UK also has announced up to £ 150 million assistance for vulnerable economies. The money will go to the International Monetary Fund’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) to help developing countries to deal with the short term economic disruption caused by coronavirus, allowing them to focus their spending on tackling the outbreak.
Meanwhile, the procurement process for the COVID-19 related projects is available through the developmentaid.org platform.
DevelopmentAid brings you Weekly Reviews of the COVID-19 situation across the globe. Our next review will be released on March 25th. Subscribe to our newsletter and learn more about the coronavirus outbreak and the efforts of the international development community to tackle it.
About COVID-2019 Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common in many different species of animals including camels, cattle, cats and bats. Rarely, animal coronaviruses can infect people and then spread between them such as was the case with MERS (2012) and SARS (2003).The symptoms of the virus are very similar to those of a common cold – runny nose, headache,cough,sore throat, fever, a general feeling of being unwell. Blood tests are necessary in order to prove the presence of the virus in the organism. Named by scientists as the “Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus”, 2019-nCoV is a coronavirus, like MERS and SARs, all of which have their origins in bats. Initial reports show that, in the early stages of the outbreak (early January 2020), many of those infected in Wuhan had some link to a large seafood and live animal market – the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, mainly its western wing where wildlife animals are traded. This suggests that the virus initially affected an animal and subsequently spread to a person in a what a CDC has called “the species barrier jump”.
