Covid-19 is the thing that has been talked about on every newscast, website, magazine, social media platform and everything else for months on end. It took everything we all knew and loved and changed it: No more gatherings, seeing friends and family, and many people lost their jobs and loved ones. The whole world had to stop in order for things to get better and now things are getting worse again. The issue is the whole world stopped and we still know very little about how things are going in third world countries. We haven’t heard how the virus is affecting countries that are less fortunate. The news talked about Italy, China, Western Europe but never much about other places. We see how it is affecting America now. We as a country could’ve done much better with caution but we didn’t. We had many opportunities to do better and we didn’t take them. Now we need to look into countries with less technology and resources. 

In many African countries, Covid-19 isn’t necessarily what you would expect. Some speculate that it hasn’t really reached that area in the world as much due to the lack of tourism, but the low numbers are more likely due to underreporting.  With that said there are roughly 8.5 million cases known on the continent of Africa.  55% of all cases on the continent are  coming from three countries. Those countries are Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria. These countries all have fully established health care systems. Some scientists worry that there are many more underlying cases. They lack testing and other necessary tools to be able to count the total number of cases in specific areas.There is also a strong worry because of how these countries reacted to other diseases such as HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. They took big hits from these because of the lack of materials needed to fight them and Covid could spark the same risk.

When talking to people within the school about the issue, nobody really had a strong grasp on what was going on over there so answers to some of the questions were very limited. On top of that, a few questions were asked comparing the situation in the United States compared to third world countries. Angelina, a senior at Ipswich High, was asked if she would find it believable that Covid is worse in the United States than it is in some third world countries. “Honestly it is kind of surprising because the tech we have is much more advanced than in third world countries so we should have a better hold on it.” She makes an extremely valid point considering how much more technologically and medically advanced the United States is compared to some of the other countries in question. She was also asked about how she would think a virus like Covid would affect a third world country. She said “ We are a lot more medically advanced than some of the third world countries so it would take a much more negative and harsher toll on them.” 

I also spoke to my dad on the situation. I chose to speak to him about it because of how much he is watching the news and how many different news outlets he chooses to look at and listen to. Considering Covid has been just about the biggest news story if not one of them, I assumed he might have an idea. “I actually surprisingly haven’t heard much about it; you’d think that some news would cover it but unfortunately since so many things have been going on in the country throughout the year, I guess they didn’t have the time or materials to cover it.” Since he watches so many news channels it came to me as a shock that he didn’t have any type of knowledge on the situation but it just goes to show the lack of coverage on the problem.

It almost seems wrong that the people of these less fortunate countries are being left behind in the fight against Covid. Many things can be done to help and hopefully this will bring a small shed of light into the school on the sad situation at hand.