Social media presents a robust stage for disseminating time-sensitive information that is needed during a public health disease of global concern such as COVID-19. This study finds out how the 23 anglophone Sub-Saharan African countries’ national health ministries and infectious disease agencies disseminated COVID-19 related information through their social media accounts within the first three months after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. COVID-19 related qualitative and quantitative data types were collected from the social media accounts of the surveyed national health ministries and agencies for analysis. Over 86% of the African countries had presence on social media; Facebook was the most popular, though Twitter contained more posts. One of the credibility issues that was noticed is that most of the health ministries’ and agencies’ social media accounts were unverified and access to the social media accounts was not provided on most of their official websites. Information dissemination became more deliberate and increased significantly after the announcement of the fist cases of COVID-19 in the countries under review. Awareness creation, updates and news constituted the major categories of information that were disseminated, mostly in the form of derivative social media information before the announcement of the first COVID-19 case in the surveyed African countries. Campaigns against misinformation were barely undertaken by most of the countries. Strategies used by some countries included the employment of social media influencers and creation of content in local languages. Strategies that include development of health information content that targets different groups in African societies and the inclusion of elderly in the community and religious leaders as non-state actors in health information communication were recommended.

中文翻译：

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探索撒哈拉以南非洲在社交媒体上传播 COVID-19 相关健康信息

社交媒体为传播在全球关注的公共卫生疾病（如 COVID-19）期间所需的时间敏感信息提供了一个强大的舞台。本研究了解 23 个以英语为母语的撒哈拉以南非洲国家的国家卫生部和传染病机构如何在世界宣布 COVID-19 为大流行病后的前三个月内通过其社交媒体帐户传播 COVID-19 相关信息卫生组织。从接受调查的国家卫生部和机构的社交媒体账户中收集了与 COVID-19 相关的定性和定量数据类型以进行分析。超过 86% 的非洲国家使用社交媒体；Facebook 是最受欢迎的，尽管 Twitter 包含更多帖子。注意到的可信度问题之一是，大多数卫生部和机构的社交媒体帐户未经验证，并且大多数官方网站上都没有提供对社交媒体帐户的访问权限。在被审查国家宣布首例 COVID-19 病例后，信息传播变得更加刻意并显着增加。在被调查的非洲国家宣布首例 COVID-19 病例之前，宣传、更新和新闻构成了传播的主要信息类别，主要以衍生社交媒体信息的形式传播。大多数国家几乎没有开展反对错误信息的运动。一些国家使用的策略包括雇用社交媒体影响者和用当地语言创建内容。