The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a serious question over preparedness to deal with mass fatality. The current trend shows that there would be more bodies than the capacity and resources to handle them. The international agencies have alerted governments that the number of deaths may overwhelm the local capacity to handle dead bodies properly. Mass fatality management and planning are important to respecting the dignity of the deceased and surviving family. Inadequate capacity to deal with dead bodies may affect the psychological well-being of survivors which may result in distress to families and community.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship, carrying 3711 passengers and crew members, docked at Yokohama Port in Japan on February 3, 2020. A quarantine was immediately instituted because 1 passenger who had disembarked in Hong Kong was confirmed to have tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). After the quarantine began, all passengers and crew were tested using the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) polymerase chain reaction assay on the ship, 696 of whom tested positive. In total, 769 patients, including 696 with COVID-19, required transport to a hospital. The Japan Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) successfully picked up and safely transported the COVID-19 patients using a novel classification system to prioritize patients. The Japan DMAT transported 203 patients to hospitals in Kanagawa and another 566 patients to hospitals in 15 different prefectures.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a devastating chapter in history. The consequences of the pandemic unfold daily and they extend beyond physical health. Current research suggests that it is a public mental health crisis. With regard to the physical effects of COVID-19, policy-makers have drawn from past experiences, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003, to craft unique responses. A similar approach must be taken to address the mental health effects of the pandemic. Because COVID-19 can fit the definitions of a mental health disaster, it can be addressed using the principles of disaster mental health management. This letter to the editor presents arguments for defining COVID-19 as a mental health disaster, the challenges facing policy-makers in addressing it as such, and calls upon researchers to fill this gap in the literature.

Diagnostic testing to identify patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) plays a key role to control the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. While several countries have implemented the use of diagnostic testing in a massive scale as a cornerstone for infection control and surveillance, other countries affected by the pandemic are hampered by its limited testing capacity. Pooled testing was first introduced in the 1940s and is now used for screening in blood banks. Testing is done by pooling multiple individual samples together. Only in the case of a positive pool test would individual samples of the pool be tested, thus substantially reducing the number of tests needed. Several studies regarding their use for SARS CoV-2 have been done in the United States, Israel, and Germany. Studies have shown that an individual positive sample can still be detected in pools of up to 32 samples, and possibly even 64 samples, provided that additional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification cycles are conducted with a sensitivity of 96%. Simulation studies to determine optimal pool size and pooling techniques have also been conducted. Based on these studies, pooled testing is shown to be able to detect positive samples with sufficient accuracy and can easily be used with existing equipment and personnel for population-wide screening.

The prolongation of the Ebola epidemic may have allowed some countries to prepare and respond to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. In Uganda, the surveillance structure built for Ebola virus disease (EVD) has become a pillar in the COVID-19 response. This testing and tracing apparatus has limited disease spread to clusters with zero mortality compared with the neighboring East African countries. As more sub-Saharan countries implement social distancing to contain the outbreak, the interventions should be phased and balanced with health risk and socioeconomic situation. However, having a decision-making matrix would better guide the response team. These initial lessons from EVD-experienced Uganda may be helpful to other countries in the region.