This archive report was first published on 20 May 2020.
As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, universities in Kenya are facing unprecedented challenges in navigating the crisis. The pandemic has drastically altered the higher education landscape, leading to a switch to e-learning, e-examination, and e-graduation.
Published on May 20, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, resulting in widespread closures of schools, universities, and colleges. The coronavirus crisis has had far-reaching repercussions beyond the spread of the disease, presenting new challenges on social and economic issues, including student fees arrears, digital learning, food insecurity, and access to healthcare, housing, and the internet.
With new admissions for first-year students on hold until the virus has been contained, universities are facing significant economic implications. The pandemic has also sparked conspiracy theories, including the claim that the new coronavirus was created in a research laboratory and accidentally released into the environment.
However, if the coronavirus was indeed a bioweapon, its spread has clearly indicated that universities are ill-prepared for such a threat. University labs store and handle a variety of pathogens, chemicals, and toxins, and have a diverse society with individuals from different nationalities, ethnic settings, political persuasions, religions, and creeds.
Such a mosaic architecture of people has the potential to host individuals with corrupt morals, radicalized individuals masquerading as researchers, students, or visitors with the intention of causing harm to others. Bioterrorism covers a wide spectrum of concerns, from catastrophic terrorism with mass casualties to micro events based on low technologies but with potential for civil unrest, disruption, disease, disabilities, and death.
Despite the threat of bioterrorism having been ignored and denied for a long time, it is, nonetheless, real. There is a growing concern over the need to detect, diagnose, characterize, and respond appropriately to bioweapons and the threat thereof in an academic setting.
As a post-COVID-19 plan to reopen universities, there is a need to create awareness on matters of biosecurity, biosafety, and bioterrorism by establishing the necessary institutional infrastructure to mitigate such potential threats. The provisions of the National Biosafety Authority on the use of human and animal pathogens and toxins, health, and safety should be enhanced and complied with without exception.
Universities must rethink their crisis management strategies. COVID-19 has called universities to attention, and they need to continually review and be flexible in quickly adapting to the changing dynamics that confront them. In these uncertain times, universities need a paradigm shift from their complacency and be prepared for emerging challenges like the pandemic and even bioterrorism.
