Editorial African laboratory medicine in the time of COVID-19

2020 has been a turbulent year but one that fixed the importance of laboratory medicine in the eye of the global public. Public health experts’ worst fears surrounding a hypothetical ‘Agent X’ that spurred thousands of calls for ‘pandemic preparedness’ in the last half-decade have become eerily true and the importance of ‘testing’ is now broadly acknowledged. By the end of the first quarter of 2020, following its emergence in Wuhan, China, Agent X was named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); it had caused infections in almost every country, and one of the worst pandemics of all time was underway (Figure 1). Instituting SARS-CoV-2 testing rapidly and reliably was one of the pivotal distinguishers between countries that got a handle on their coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemics and those that did not. ....