Morocco faces COVID-19

Morocco was one of the first African countries to take the fight against the coronavirus seriously. It anticipated the closure of airspace and - it is true that with relative success - the confinement of people. It immediately took praiseworthy measures to protect families in greatest difficulty: with no income to support themselves and no roof over their heads. 

It took the authorities a long time to bring to their senses many citizens who did not understand the need for such drastic decisions. The security forces were powerless to prevent large gatherings, including religious ones, and by the continuous challenge to bans on going out into the streets without differentiating family or social congregations from basic needs. 

Morocco was at great risk because of its proximity to Europe, where the presence of the virus was felt earlier than in the rest of Africa. It is a country with many connections and visitor exchanges with Italy, France and Spain, where the pandemic emerged earlier and with greater virulence. Gaining time was fundamental to stop it from spreading, although its incidence is already high.

Around 80,000 people were fined and many arrested for violating the rules. Communications, with the exception of television, did not reach as many people and it took the authorities a long time to convince them of the danger. Police were alerting people in the streets with megaphones. There too, the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus or other ailments is not so clear.

The biggest success in recent weeks was the use of drones. Until recently it was forbidden to use them for any activity other than official ones. But it was fortunate to realise that they could be an interesting tool in the fight against the pandemic. In China they had already been used and bought a good number of units before other countries rushed in and raised the price. But the initiative didn't stop there: local engineers got to work and started building models that are currently in use. It is very common to see them flying over the remote cities, over the roads and over the rural areas where non-confinement is more relaxed in order to attend to farming jobs.

Their use is twofold: on the roads and in the cities they control movement and ensure that groups of people do not form. They act as spies; they have already discovered clandestine night-time meetings whose participants were found surprised and heading for the police stations. This is how they achieved their first objective: to make people feel more watched and fear has spread.

In other places, including several large workplaces, drones are used to spread disinfectants that reduce the risks of contagion. As in the vast majority of affected countries the pandemic is causing brutal economic damage to both public finances and industry and commerce, so the concern now is to save what can be saved from the tourist campaign.