People are fearful of the virus spread in Ivory Coast market

(27 Mar 2020) LEAD IN :

People in the West African nation of Ivory Coast are fearful of the spread of the coronavirus.

Daily life is already difficult as the numbers of those infected increases.



STORY-LINE :

Across Abidjan people flock to markets to get daily essentials and second hand clothes from thrift stores.

In the Angre neighbourhood market business is down and mistrust is growing. People are fearful of catching the new coronavirus.

Second clothes trader Zossou Junior Kings says that because many of the second hand clothes sold here come from Europe, people are concerned that they carry the infection."They think the clothes we sell are already infected with the coronavirus. There are others who pay, there are others who don't pay. They say that when the disease stops, they're going to start coming back" he explains.

Europe has been badly affected by COVID-19.

Spain is now the country in Europe where the coronavirus outbreak is expanding fastest. It's second only to the United States in the number of new cases reported.

Spain's Health Ministry reported 8,578 new infections and 655 deaths on Thursday March 26, bringing the total infections to 56,188 and more than 4,000 fatalities.

Italy's initial steep rise in confirmed cases has started to level off more than two weeks into a nationwide lockdown. On Wednesday March 25, the country reported 5,210 new cases and 683 deaths.

In normal times Junior Kings could expect to make a profit of twenty-five thousand francs equivalent of forty-one US dollars on a good day.

Since the start of the spread of the pandemic, his profits are steadily decreasing and now he is lucky to take five thousand franc equivalent of 8 dollars per day.

Shopper Lobué Keren, had been wearing second hand clothes since childhood, but a recent skin rash has put her off and now she prefers to buy new clothing.  

"I once wore clothes that were called thrift store clothes but they gave me spots. Even though I washed them and dried them afterwards I saw spots on my body. So I stopped (buying second hand clothes) and prefer to shop at shops that sell new clothes."

There is a lot of concern here that the clothes and boxes that they come in may carry the virus.

"The clothes we sell in Africa come directly from Europe. So once they are infected there and then it comes to Africa, it can also infect you. So if the government can help us in this business by controlling what leaves the European continent to come to Africa and control it directly at the port. "

says Junior Kings.

The new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days, tests by U.S. government and other scientists have found.

Their work, published Wednesday March 11, doesn't prove that anyone has been infected through breathing it from the air or by touching contaminated surfaces, researchers stress.

For this study, researchers used a nebulizer device to put samples of the new virus into the air, imitating what might happen if an infected person coughed or made the virus airborne some other way.

They found that viable virus could be detected up to three hours later in the air, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Similar results were obtained from tests they did on the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, so differences in durability of the viruses do not account for how much more widely the new one has spread, researchers say.




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