Avoiding a Second Surge

Editorial

It is a fact that so far we have managed the Covid-19 pandemic reasonably well, when compared to say our sister island Reunion of comparable size physically and in terms of population. The statistics are available and can be viewed on the Covid-19 worldometer. Could we have done better? Possibly, if we had not allowed a group of Chinese tourists or some from Reunion to enter the country sometime in January – but all that is past history with, however, a lesson to learn. It is that our surveillance must be even more strict and rigorous now that we are allowing foreigners and our Mauritian citizens to come in larger numbers.

That it is possible to do so is evidenced by the fact that it has been done before: after all, even during the lockdown period, private jets were allowed to fly in and hotels which took in Arab tourists. It is true that they were few in number and they booked the whole hotel and so there was no problem or distancing. Nevertheless the fact that they could come, spend their holidays and go back without adding to Covid cases in the local population means that there were protocols in place to control the situation.

As regards repatriation of our citizens that has been going on for several weeks now, there is anecdotal evidence on the part of persons who had come in about a month ago that they were on the whole satisfied with their stay at the respective hotels where they were put up. They gave a food note to the logistical arrangements at the airport on arrival, where airport personnel, staff from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the police coordinated the performance of tests, the transport to the hotels assigned and the reception and arrangements during their stay.

In the case of one young couple with two children who had flown in from Australia, for example, on the 14^th day of quarantine, tests were carried out in the morning and they were told that there 500 such tests that had been done and were to be analysed at the Central Laboratory at Victoria Hospital. They could therefore not be told when the results would be available, and thus when they would leave the hotel. To their pleasant surprise very late at night that Monday they were informed that they had tested negative and to be ready to leave by 11 the next morning. Which in fact happened and they were home at midday.

The point here is that at the start of the speeding up of repatriation there seems to have been effective handling of the process and this has further helped in controlling spread of the virus. The risk is that with the further acceleration that is already under way, there may be lapses in the handling and protocol. A clip circulating on social media has shown some disorderly scenes at the airport as travellers were coming out, not all wore masks or kept the safe distance recommended. This and other information that is going through the grapevine is what is generating a fear of a surge as has happened in several countries that had initially well controlled the pandemic, and therefore of a potential second lockdown in the making.

This is because of a risk of accelerating towards Phase 3 of pandemic (when the health system begins to be overwhelmed, as happened in e.g. Italy, Spain) from the Phase 2 that we have been in, that is, the situation is still manageable: the health system was coping though under strain. We have had the misfortune of losing a frontliner, to the coronavirus, and as everywhere else, health personnel have been working under strain. Should we have a second surge we do not know whether they or the system will have the same resilience and capacity to cope as they have done earlier.

On the other hand, economically the country has been going backwards, with workers and employees losing a lot of what was taken as acquired to date. Needless to say, this is adding to the fear of the impact of a second lockdown.

It is clear therefore that the authorities face the heavy twin-challenge of reassuring the population and stopping the economic slide. This can only happen by a deft and efficacious management of the incoming streams of Mauritians returning and tourists, especially as regards the latter those coming from countries where the Covid incidence is high. This means being very strict about all the preventive public health measures, especially about the enforcement aspect for any breach of the measures recommended.

In other words, it means being even better at managing the incoming passengers on arrival and once they are out of quarantine than we have been in the earlier phase. This will avoid us a second surge, and consequently a second lockdown – which will sound our death knell.

* Published in print edition on 6 October 2020