ARE BLACK PEOPLE IMMUNE TO THE CORONAVIRUS?
There’s a rumor going around that black people can’t get the coronavirus. After all, we haven’t heard or seen of too many cases of any African Americans who have contracted the virus.
So we did a little research to 1) see where this rumor came from, and 2) to see if it was true.
It seems as though social media help spread a story about “report” that said a man who had the Coronovirus stayed alive because of his African American skin.
Here’s the direct quote:
“Doctors said he remained alive because he has black skin, the antibodies of a black are 3 times stronger, powerful and resistant compared to that of white.”
To be honest, scientists are saying there’s no evidence that statement is true and have denied where it came from. As a matter of fact, none of the articles ever mentioned that black or darker skin, or even African American lineage made people immune to the disease.
And recently, a case of the Coronavirus has shown up in the continent of Africa, in the country of Egypt. We are unaware if the person who contracted the virus is of darker skin or not.
Egypt has confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus. This newfound entry into Africa comes with little surprise as Africa is a continent with increasingly close ties to China where…
… the virus originated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency – largely because of fears that poorer countries may not be able to cope with an outbreak.
“The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is from Ethiopia.
The health systems in many African countries are already struggling with the existing workload, so can they deal with another outbreak of a highly infectious disease?
Michael Yao, WHO’s head of emergency operations in Africa, notes that some countries on the continent “have the minimum to start with – they’re not starting from scratch”.
“We know how fragile the health system is on the African continent and these systems are already overwhelmed by many ongoing disease outbreaks, so for us it is critical to detect earlier so that we can prevent the spread.”
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that public health officials are operating in “uncharted territory” as they combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. To date, it has infected more than 90,000 people across 73 countries and territories as of Monday evening.
central Chinese city of Wuhan. Medical workers are now battling deadly outbreak clusters in South Korea, Iran and Italy, while other countries are working furiously to avoid a similar fate by readying public health authorities, alerting their citizens and enacting travel restrictions to affected areas.
To date, there have been 172 deaths reported outside mainland China, raising the global death toll to 3,115. Several nations that have seen cases are putting in place measures to limit the virus’ spread: closing schools, encouraging remote work and canceling or scaling back public events, just to name a few.
The WHO has so far held off on classifying the incident as a global pandemic, but has warned it is a possibility in the near future.
“We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the global health watchdog.
