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The confirmation of a small group of cases of Covid-19 in South Africa is not a cause for panic, since the South African health authorities were alert and activated testing and quarantine measures very quickly.

It’s, however, a warning sign that Zimbabweans need to be vigilant and need to take seriously the medical advice on precautions.

The advice on precautions does work.

China was the first country to be hit by the new coronavirus.

Statistics abound that more than 80 754 Chinese have been infected, about three quarters of the global total, and in just one day, 4 February, more than 3 800 Chinese were confirmed as being ill with Covid-19.

The statistics that are not generally aired at length in the world’s media is that just under 60 000 of those 80 000 confirmed cases are now fully cured, that the number of Chinese under treatment has crashed from almost 60 000 to just over 17 000 and that the number of new infections each day is now a handful.

In fact, you are now more likely to become infected in South Korea, Iran or Italy than in China.

This major success in China in getting on top of the outbreak is not a miracle, or even wholly the result of China having a decent public health system, although that was obviously important.

Very importantly it is a result of the people of China being very careful, and taking the advice of their health system.

What China has shown as it nears the day when the last confirmed case is found in that country, is that the infection can be beaten rather quickly if the authorities act swiftly, if the people act sensibly, and if the proper facilities, such as routine screening and adequate hospitals for isolating infected people, are in place.

China has been open about what has happened, what is happening and how it has contained the outbreak and is now close to eliminating it. And China has been more than willing to pass on the lessons learned and to offer other countries, including Zimbabwe, some specific help.

The World Health Organisation is largely applying the lessons learned in China to the rest of the world.

The personal precautions are fairly simple. Personal hygiene needs to be taken seriously.

Washing hands with good old-fashioned soap and water “for at least 20 seconds” before and after eating or using a bathroom is a good start; keeping kitchens and food counters clean; thinking about the need for particular journeys; avoiding people who are coughing and sneezing even if it is only the common cold; staying at home if you do have flu until you have confirmed it is a different sort of flu.

The authorities have another list. That screening of travellers at border posts is a good start.

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 probably cannot be passed on unless a person is actually already sick, coughing and sneezing and, rather helpfully, exhibiting a body temperature above normal.

So those temperature scanners will pick up someone who is infected and they can be quarantined until tests show if they are infected or just have some minor cold. Zimbabwe is doing this and now doing it more conscientiously.

Making sure that there are adequate isolation facilities for nursing ill people with flu is important. There is just one hospital in Zimbabwe at the moment properly set up, Wilkins Hospital in Harare. As the WHO has noted, another one or two, at least in Beitbridge and in Victoria Falls, would be wise.

So a traveller with a temperature can be quickly quarantined until the test results are ready, a matter of hours.

The precautions now being advised and pressed on both authorities and the general public will have other benefits long after Covid-19 is out of the human population.

They also minimise the risk of “ordinary” flu and colds, which is not that bad an idea.

Covid-19 is caused by the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans.

The first, and least dangerous, causes about 10 percent of cases of the common cold.

The most dangerous is the one that caused the 2003 infection, which killed 10 percent of those infected although only 8 000 people were infected.

The present variety has killed 4 100 people, an average of 3,4 percent of those infected, but with a very skewed age-related distribution of deaths.

Old people are far more susceptible, with almost 15 percent of infected people over 80 dying. Old people with cardiovascular illnesses and diabetes are the worst off, and so need to take extra precautions and need families who will make sure their exposure to risk is very low. Just doing grandmother’s shopping is a good start to keep her away from others.

Another set of precautions involves a custom change around the world.

The coronaviruses seem to have originated in bat populations, in particular populations of horseshoe bats, with probably some intermediate stage of mutation in another wild mammal population.

China has already banned trapping and eating of wild animals and other countries should follow.

Most diseases new to humans, after all, are zoonotic, that is coming from wild animals that someone wants to eat.

Ebola seems to have its origin in fruit bats and HIV-1 seems to have originated in an ancestral virus carried by a Gabonese chimpanzee, that then infected a hunter with cuts on his hands, then going through some complex mutations in the social and health total disaster of Kinshasa under Belgian rule in the 1930s.

As with so much in the health field, precautions without panic, without xenophobia and without amateur conspiracy theories, will go a long way to ensuring a healthy population with only the “old” diseases, for which we have vaccines or treatments.