No victory lap yet!

If true, this is deeply worrying. For one, the existence of underlying medication conditions has not been found to be a driving force, rather it is believed that the virus on its own may cause a stroke among young people.

The thinking in the early days of the outbreak was that young people are less at risk. This now appears to be dampened by new findings.

Ours is an era of fast-paced news flow and rapid, cross-border developments that are sometimes very difficult to keep pace with. The news and information (including disinformation), conspiracies and conjectures on Covid-19 are in our faces daily.

Every passing hour seems to bring new findings, observations, context and conspiracy. Even as some countries like Italy and Spain that were hit hard earlier, started gradual processes of returning to normal business, there remains a lot about the virus that we simply do not know. It is an evolving phenomenon and a moving target.

In Uganda, the Museveni government, starting with Mr Museveni himself, undoubtedly deserves credit for robustly handling at least some aspects of the crisis and with good measure of professionalism. This, perhaps, is partly the reason there are comparatively few reported cases of the virus and no confirmed death yet.

The vigilance of the public health infrastructure, never mind its huge constraints and tenuous nature, the proactive work of state security actors (their excesses notwithstanding) and the constant preaching of precaution by Mr Museveni all have in likelihood contributed to countering the spread of the virus.

The reality though, is that short of nipping the virus and limiting its wider reach in Uganda, we are in for a battering considering the country’s limited capacity in medical emergency and the inability to handle many cases of people needing urgent care.

In the recent weeks, there have been rather rushed celebrations on social and mainstream media given that the confirmed numbers remain very few even within the context of the African continent that still has a relatively small number of infections. Trying to take a victory lap at this point is rather ill-advised and potentially perilous.

For one, we just do not know well enough the possible extent of the spread of the virus because there has not been that much testing across the width and breadth of the country. We may well be having many cases out there in the communities, some of which might be still incubating and festering for a possible assault. May be, maybe not.

External observers have long predicted that the worst is yet to visit Africa. As I noted last week though, given what the virus has already done in the West, so far the trends and trajectory for Africa appear to be disappointing the doomsayers and all those always keen on predicting, in fact seeing, the worst possible outcome for the continent.

At this point, it is fair to say that Uganda is in good shape, but to think the battle is over would be both naïve and dangerous. Arguably, the biggest failure of the Ugandan government at this point is not to see the huge looming economic disaster.

If the public health response has been decent and commendable, the absence of a comprehensive and compelling economic plan is shocking and unacceptable. There has been no articulate short-term measures to prop up the economy and no attempt at constructing a robust response to what lies ahead, especially if the lockdown continues to remain necessary to curb the spread.

We are generally a low output economy, overall, and worse in value-added production. Many businesses and small-scale production entities are likely to go down in an environment of costly credit and limited liquidity due to an economic downturn.

One of the most troubling things about the Museveni regime has been the insistence on a wildly conservative monetary policy stance whose overarching goal is reigning in inflation, but with little regard for the impact on actual business activity.
Confronting the looming economic crisis should be an important time for the Bank of Uganda to step away from insisting on limiting the amount of money in circulation while doing almost nothing to reduce interest rates by commercial banks. We need an expansionary monetary intervention to breathe life back into the economy.

Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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