Assessment of the preparedness of the Ugandan health care system to tackle more COVID-19 cases

Coronaviruses are human and animal pathogens causing mainly respiratory infections but their potential to cause serious diseases, even pandemics, with the right conditions have been predicted by several studies [1]. For example, in a 2017 briefing to the United States (US) president, the US military predicted the possibility of such an outbreak [2]. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a global pandemic caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, confirms the accuracy of such predictions. This disease which originated from Wuhan, China gave the rest of the world some window of opportunity to prepare to tackle a possible widespread outbreak. The Ugandan health care system, for example, had an 81-day pre-outbreak opportunity and still has a post-outbreak opportunity since it only has 413 confirmed COVID-19 cases, a relatively low figure, as at May 30, 2020 [3]. Did the system utilise the preoutbreak opportunity? Is the system utilizing the post-outbreak opportunity? These are the questions this paper aims to address.