Nigerians jettison COVID-19 protocol amid second wave fears

Nigerians are losing their guard already in the middle of a pandemic that is spreading rapidly across the world.

The second wave of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has started in many parts of Europe, the United States, India and other parts of the world, and there are fears that this could hit Nigeria with international airports open and Covid-19 protocol increasingly breached.

In marketplaces, bus stations, offices, hospitals, banks, schools, restaurants, churches, and mosques, among other settings, guards have been let down as the majority seem to be living in false consciousness that the novel coronavirus is a by-gone virus.

At the various automated teller machine (ATM) centres in Lagos, for instance, security personnel no longer wear stern looks that discourage users without face masks.

In Kano hospitals, including the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital where BusinessDay tracked Covid-19 management, waiting relatives of patients are flocking the premises unbothered about physical distancing. They cluster together, eat from the same source with bare hands while hospitals have no checks for temperature.

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Nationally, the spiral #EndSARS protests brought the breach of precautions to the peak as many wilfully shunned safety measures for the agitation of what they considered more threatening to their lives than Covid-19 itself.

Worried President Muhammadu Buhari last week warned about the havoc that a second wave of the disease could wreak on Nigeria’s struggling economy, given the apparent hardship that the pandemic has spelt on consumer goods prices, transportation cost, and out-of-pocket healthcare burden, among others.

Akin Abayomi, Lagos state commissioner for health, has similarly re-echoed that the fading adherence to preventive actions will not only translate into another season of economic breakdown but could also put to waste the results so far achieved.

But unfortunately, the message has failed to sink into minds of Nigerians disappointed by the failures of governance in critical areas that affect the well-being of the average Nigerian.

“Which wave? Be more concerned about the wave of hunger, bad governance, corrupt government, insurgency, and police brutality. Nigerians are not afraid of Covid-19. Something more than Covid-19 is killing Nigerians,” Awurum Darlington under the Twitter handle @OfficialBaba_D, replied @MBuhari.

Confirmed cases of new infections have not depleted even with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) lean system of testing, contact tracing, isolation, quarantining and treatment.

Nigeria had 137 new cases on November 3; 72 cases on November 2, and 111 cases the previous day with 1,151 deaths on November 3. The country is not testing, which is why it records low numbers.

With 578,841 samples tested as of October 24, only 0.2 percent of the country’s 200 million population has been tested whereas Brazil has tested 5.5 million samples; India, 8.2 million; Argentina, 1.1 million; United Kingdom, 1 million, and the United States, 9.1 million.

According to Rosemary Audu, head of virology at the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), in an interview with BusinessDay, the theory of herd immunity is yet to be proven as the country does not yet understand whether people are able to develop active antibodies that can wade off reinfection.

The implication of poor safety trend is that many Nigerians with the underlying disease will become much endangered, Audu said.

“There are many people who walk about without even knowing that they suffer from diseases like diabetes, kidney complications or respiratory disease because we don’t have a culture of undergoing regular health checks. But then, we are still seeing increasing positivity of Covid-19 daily. It can be really bad if we fail to take caution,” she said.

Since the opening of the airspaces, containing the importation of the disease has been hinged on mandatory testing and self-care, transferring the responsibility of isolation from the government to individuals.

This has led analysts into casting doubt over the official figures from the centre, as they argue that the statistics only capture the prevalence of the pandemic in part, not in whole.

The official report shows that new confirmed cases have been dwindling, not as a result of a slowing community transmission across the country but partly due to protest-induced restrictions to movements that affected turnout at sample collection sites.

“Decline in Covid-19 cases is as a result of low testing in states due to curfews, especially in Lagos, accounting for over 60 percent of tests in the country. The virus doesn’t know why people congregate, therefore we can’t let down our guards,” Chike Ihekweazu, NCDC’s director-general wrote in a tweet recently.

While Nigeria’s low case fatality rate of 1.8 percent appears to be bolstering the relaxed attitude to the disease, the bouts of lockdown in Germany, France and the UK have shown that Nigerians cannot be too careful.

In Mongolia, a country the World Health Organisation (WHO) urges all to emulate, no death has occurred. It has maintained a sequence of strictly imported cases, devoid of local transmission mainly through prevention.