The Pan American Health Organisation said on Thursday that it is working with health ministries in Latin America and the Caribbean to help them prepare to deal with possible importations of cases of novel coronavirus.
In a series of technical cooperation activities, PAHO experts in laboratories, preparedness, epidemiology, clinical management, infection prevention and control, and other areas are supporting public health officials in various countries.
According to PAHO, in the area of diagnosis, it is providing guidance and reagents to national public health laboratories including National Influenza Centres so they can perform laboratory tests to confirm or discard the presence of novel coronavirus. Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador and Suriname have already implemented the 2019 novel coronavirus protocol.
PAHO virologists are being deployed to Brazil and Mexico to train country experts together with partners including the Ministry of Health and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil and in Mexico, the Ministry of Health and its Institute for Diagnostic and Epidemiological Reference (InDRE). In the next two weeks, 29 national laboratories in the Americas will have the capacity to run these tests, said Dr Jarbas Barbosa, PAHO’s Assistant Director.
PAHO is also providing guidance for hospitals in the form of readiness checklists to ensure they are prepared to receive potential patients with coronavirus, including guidance for clinicians, infection prevention and control, isolation measures, and clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection when a novel coronavirus infection is suspected.
Since the novel coronavirus outbreak was first reported by China, there has been more than 28,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV infection and 565 deaths globally, almost all of these in China. Twenty-four other countries have reported confirmed cases of the new coronavirus.
In the Americas, 17 cases have been confirmed from two countries, the US with 12 and Canada with five. In Latin America and the Caribbean, no confirmed cases of novel coronavirus have been reported to date.
Advice has also been developed on key topics including the use of masks during home care and in healthcare settings in the context of the outbreak, clinical management, infection prevention and control in healthcare settings, home care for patients with suspected novel coronavirus, risk communication and community engagement.
An essential list of biomedical equipment, medicines and supplies necessary to care for patients with 2019-nCoV has been distributed, and WHO has published updated advice for international traffic in relation to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV.
