Who safeguards journalists against the coronavirus pandemic

By Esther Nakkazi

Zimbabwe's first death from Covid-19 is a journalist. A fine broadcaster Zororo Makamba, 30, was  Zimbabwe's second reported positive Covid-19 patient, health and child care minister Obadiah Moyo said on Saturday.

Makamba died three days after admission with 'severe respiratory distress' at the Wilkins Infectious Diseases hospital in Harare, the city’s only Covid-19 facility media reports say.

The journalist traveled to New York on February 29 returning on March 12th. The trip was either private or for work or for both we are not sure. Most likely Makamba contracted Covid-19 from the journey, it is unexplained. On his return to Harare, his movements were unrestricted. He met some bankers for 15 minutes, one bank revealed.

The current Coronavirus pandemic has journalists worldwide highly exposed to Covid-19 as any frontline workers in any public service delivery.

Unfortunately, in Africa, more-so in Uganda a few media houses have provided their staff with personal protective gear or equipment (PPE) as they gather Covid-19 updates. It is worse with freelance journalists. Without choice, they work unprotected. It is frustrating.

The Health Journalists Network in Uganda (HEJNU) founded in 2011, with about 80 members, who cover science and based at different media houses around the country has a WhatsApp group with about 70 health/science reporters.

The daily practice is that HEJNU members share information, contacts, and anything related to the media or health and science only. Since the coronavirus outbreak more members take time to share their stories, tips, and frustrations. Lack of personal protective equipment is a sore spot.

Today, one member shared a TV story he recorded working without wearing protective gear. The HEJNU member was covering a story about quarantined Chinese nationals who had refused to
undergo the 14 days mandatory self-isolation.

Besides admiring his fearlessness members rebuked him for not wearing protective gear and risking his health - all echoing  'no story worth your life'. Media houses have a duty to provide journalists with protective gear!

At HEJNU we all cautioned ourselves to work from home in the absence of protective gear and share information (which is hard, but times are tough).

Ida Jooste, an Internews media trainer and global health media adviser says now journalists need to rethink how they work; from home, asking trusted sources to send comments, doing interviews through calls among other tasks.

As journalists now more than ever, during the coronavirus pandemic we should consider sharing video footage, tips, contacts, audio recordings, few media houses will provide protective gear although they should put our safety ahead of stories and counting eyeballs.

We owe the public accurate and, timely updates about the pandemic. These can only be provided by healthy journalists.

RIP- Zororo Makamba

Observed reduced air pollution over China amidst COVID-19

By Esther Nakkazi

As a result of the reduction in daily traffic and industry activities in China since the COVID-19 outbreak, climate monitoring services have noticed a reduction in air pollution.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reports that it observed a decrease of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) for the month of February relative to the previous three years. PM2.5 is one of the most important air pollutants regarding health impacts according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

PM2.5 is used to describe particles that are 2.5 micrometres and smaller in size. These particles, either solid, gas or liquid in composition, have potential to pose serious health problems when inhaled into the respiratory system and are known to trigger or worsen chronic diseases and other respiratory problems.

When comparing the difference between the monthly average for February 2020 and the mean of monthly averages for February 2017, 2018 and 2019, it clearly shows that these analyses indicate a reduction of about 20-30 % in surface PM2.5 over large parts of China in February 2020 based on information from the satellite observations, says the CAMS. 

The reduction in PM2.5 can likely be attributed in part to the slow-down in activity due to measures against the COVID-19 spread, the report says.

Vincent-Henri Peuch, Director of CAMS said they do not discount other variables next to the shutdown potentially playing a role in the decrease. For instance, China has actively been trying to reduce emissions, and meteorological variability between different years.

"To subtract these variables out of the equation, we set the duration of three years 2017-2019 to estimate the ‘business as usual’ conditions as a compromise to have a representative estimate of February’s monthly mean, while not considering too long of a period over which emissions vary substantially because of long-term trends,” said Peuch.

CAMS monitors PM2.5 over China by combining observations from satellites with detailed computer models of the atmosphere resulting in daily analyses.

To further substantiate this finding, CAMS also produced the same difference between February 2020 and the February mean for 2017-2019 without using the satellite observations. Because the PM2.5 values are in this case only dependent on the prescribed emissions and the meteorological conditions, it can provide a reference for the difference where satellite information was used as well. 

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