The warnings about resuming public gatherings are being made worldwide — but the stakes are particularly high in West Africa, where countries with fewer hospitals and ventilators have been prioritizing disease prevention as a public health strategy.
In this photo taken Friday, May 15, 2020, a follower of the Senegalese Mouride brotherhood, an order of Sufi Islam, films with his smartphone as he and others practice social distancing as they attend Muslim Friday prayers at West Africa's largest mosque the Massalikul Jinaan, in Dakar, Senegal.
“We are being careful but to be honest we cannot escape the virus,” said Sall, a 58-year-old tailor in a flowing orange tunic and face mask made of thick fabric. “If we abide by the precautions thatThe World Health Organization has warned that as many as 190,000 Africans could die from the coronavirus in the first year of the pandemic, and countless more from other diseases as the continent’s limited medical resources are stretched even further.
The warnings about resuming public gatherings are being made worldwide — but the stakes are particularly high in West Africa, where countries with fewer hospitals and ventilators have been prioritizing disease prevention as a publicstrategy. As elsewhere, though, decisions here are starting to reflect an acknowledgement that the coronavirus crisis might last longer than some restrictions can be tolerated.
Those early successes have been attributed to the limits on public gatherings and on regional transport, as mosques, churches and schools were swiftly shut down. Critics fear Senegal now risks an explosion of new cases if people pray in large numbers and hold gatherings to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan.
And in Guinea, a group of young men recently used force to physically open the mosques' doors in Dubreka, a city located 50 kilometers north of Guinea's capital, Conakry.
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