Amidst the disrupting circumstances resulting from the global pandemic COVID-19, this study provides a diagnosis of the contagion between February and April 2020 in the Mediterranean and Africa. It assesses the level of preparedness of national healthcare systems and examines the policy responses for containing the contagion and for mitigating the socio-economic consequences of the health crisis in several countries including: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Spain, and Tunisia.