The Gambia has reported its first Coronavirus case, exactly four months after the pandemic first broke out in the Central China city of Wuhan. The Gambia’s Health Minister Dr. Ahmadou Samateh revealed the news on national television on Tuesday night.
Chinese government records showed the first Coronavirus was discovered on November 17 last year. Coronavirus became a global health crisis in January 2020.
Until March 15th, the Gambia was without a single reported cases, although the country’s immediate neighbour Senegal registered its first case on February 29th. The country had since registered two dozen cases.
Like many Coronavirus cases in the world, the Gambia’s first too resulted from a traveller. A 21-year-old Gambian lady who travelled from the United Kingdom on March 14th had a transit through Morocco before arriving in the Gambia in early morning of 15th March. The unnamed lady who started developing fever on March 16th drove herself to MRC to do test. Her result turned positive the following day, leaving health officials with the work of tracking all those who might have direct contact with the Gambia’s first Coronavirus victim. .
The novel coronavirus is a new virus that has not been previously identified. According to the United States Center for Disease Control, the “virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 known as COVID-19 is not the same as the coronaviruses that commonly circulate among humans and cause mild illness, like the common cold.”
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