Page 12 - KGR 2020 Review Book

COVID-19

A global pandemic. The world-defining story of 2020. That sounds quite
intimidating and possibly even ‘terrifying,’ but we have experienced pandemics
before. Within the past thirty years, pandemics such as Swine Flu (H1N1),
SARS (Coronavirus), Ebola (Ebolavirus) and MERS (Coronavirus) have caused
devastation across the globe. For as long as humans have spread across the
world, so have viruses and infection diseases. Pandemics are not something
new. But yet, everything felt so different this time. The whole world reacted
differently. The whole world was affected.

Is all the pandemonium and panic of this recent pandemic valid? Were we
heading in the same direction of much bigger pandemics such as the bubonic
plague with the latest version of coronavirus, COVID-19? The COVID-19
outbreak was still considered in its early stages and by April, and had already
surpassed SARS, MERS and Ebola and was fast approaching the Yellow Fever
outbreak of the late 1800s as far as the death toll numbers go.

Touchless hand washing stations were developed and deployed at entrances and key locations There is no telling the future impact of COVID-19 other than we know it is had
March 2020 significant impact across the globe in 2020. We did know is that COVID-19 is
highly contagious and is active worldwide. In April, many countries worldwide
had recommended, and some even had enforced lockdowns asking their
residences to remain home closing shops and anything labelled as “non-
essential” to try and “flatten the curve” and slow the spread of the virus. The
Mozambican government declared a State of Emergency which went into effect
on the first of April. Ahead of the announcement, Karingani Game Reserve
had already entered Phase 2 of its COVID-19 Action Plan and implemented a
reserve-wide lockdown in order to protect its employees which had already
been practicing rigorous hand washing and social distancing as part of Phase 1
of the COVID action plan.
Staff that could not remain inside of Karingani’s boundaries during the
lockdown due to family obligations, current health status, or various other
reasons were offered to join an external fence maintenance team. The team
was responsible for cleaning, repairing and maintaining Karingani’s critical
perimeter fence from the outside ensuring staff members the opportunity
to continue to work and maintain salaries. The team was also the extra eyes
looking for potential incursions by poachers into the reserve. Poaching had
been predicted to increase with so many places decreasing staff numbers
Belton Cossa and Salomao Valoi distribute toiletry and COVID protection kits to staff making it critical for Karingani’s rangers to be ready to react and continue with
April 2020