Early response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Sierra Leone focused on key management and preparedness lessons learned from the Ebola epidemic (2014-2016): daily coordination briefings at the national emergency operations centre, isolation of positive cases, contact tracing and isolation of those exposed.18,19 Health systems around the world have adopted similar measures. The management of misinformation spread during the Ebola epidemic also aided the health system in developing strategies to share accurate information on COVID-19 through media outlets, a lesson that governments globally may have heeded sooner given the challenges of misinformation that have been widely reported since the pandemic's onset.18 Sierra Leone's measures, based on prior lessons learned and preparedness, were effective in curbing COVID-19 cases and deaths in a country whose health system is still weakened post-Ebola. These successes are stark in comparison to other African nations where cases and deaths have been markedly higher.19 While it is important to recognise the challenges in accurate reporting of COVID-19 cases and deaths in low- and middle-income country settings, existing evidence shows a large variation in case and death rates across sub-Saharan Africa; for example, South Africa has recorded the highest death rate per population (151.2 deaths per 100,000).20 Liberia (which neighbours Sierra Leone and was similarly impacted by the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak) has recorded 5.7 deaths per 100,000 population, as compared with Sierra Leone's 1.5 deaths per 100,000.21 The key learning is that one can translate lessons from one type of infection to another, while realising they have different needs, but the response principles are similar.18,19 |