President Muhammadu Buhari will make a tough call in the coming week pitting health concerns against economic ones when he decides whether the lockdown of three states for the last four weeks will continue despite the 5,000% rise in the number of patients in the last month.
On the one hand, President Buhari could further extend the lockdown imposed on Lagos, Abuja and Ogun (35-40% of Nigeria’s economy) given the recent sharp rise in cases during the lockdown. But the trade-offs are becoming costlier as households and businesses suffer, and social-order are increasingly under pressure.
As countries around the world begin to lift their lockdown amid similar sustainability concerns, the biggest question for Buhari might not be whether to lift the lockdown, rather, the best way to lift the lockdown.
Big lessons from a small neighbour
On Monday Ghana was the first African country to lift its lockdown, in two cities (Accra and Kumasi), after three weeks of restricting movement.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said residents can return to their work (both essential and nonessential) although the existing bans on public gatherings and school closure would still be in place. Ghanaians continue to maintain social distancing measures in public places including the use of face masks.
While it is still too early to tell how Ghana’s decision to lift lockdown will pan out, data so far suggests no difference in the immediate pre- and post- lockdown trajectory of coronavirus cases.
Just before lifting the lockdown, Ghana saw cases rise from 834 on April 18 to 1,042 on April 19, where it remained until 112 cases were recorded two days after the lockdown was lifted, the number of cases has remained at that level till at least Thursday.
A logarithmic scale (which shows the rate of change) provided by Worldometer as of Friday morning showed no change in the steepness of Ghana’s coronavirus curve – a sharp increase would indicate an escalation of cases.
For Nigeria, the lesson from Ghana in preparation for easing the lockdown is simple: ramp-up testing.
Ghana has an aggressive testing strategy and even employed drones in transporting samples to labs to reduce the time it takes to identify cases and respond to the threats.
Nigeria’s small neighbour said it had tested around 68,591 people out of which 16,870 were from routine surveillance, 49,699 from enhanced contact tracing and 2,022 from mandatory quarantine.
In comparison, Nigeria has tested 8,934 people while South Africa has crossed 100,000. (Data as of Thursday).
This means while other countries have a clearer picture of how widespread the pandemic is, Nigeria cannot be sure and this affects the country’s ability to make informed decisions.
Beyond Africa, countries around the world that have lifted lockdown so far, like Germany, have in place extensive testing and contact tracing measures. The example of France wrestling with lifting its lockdown due to poor testing capacity reiterates the importance of this step.
Asides testing, Ghana demonstrated a clear plan in mapping cases and identifying potential hotspots to detect asymptomatic cases to minimize the spread.
The southern experience
For South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday the government would allow a partial reopening of the economy on May 1, with travel restrictions eased and some industries allowed to operate under a five-level risk system, Reuters reported.
The country has screened more than 3.6 million people in its communities, actively looking for people with symptoms of coronavirus.
South Africa tested nearly 10,000 people in the past day – the biggest daily test number since the virus arrived, said Geoffrey York, Johannesburg-based correspondent for The Globe and Mail.
Missed windows of opportunity
Initially, Nigeria seemed to have a handle on the virus with far less reported cases than most African countries, but with far fewer tests, it cannot be said that the country’s low incidence wasn’t a mirage it had held on to while the virus spread.
Understanding there is a blind spot can help the country avoid repeating its mistakes and wasting opportunities.
On more than one occasion, Nigeria has missed critical windows to ensure that either it did not have any infectious person in the country, or it did not allow the disease to spread into the community.
Initially, Nigeria ought to shut its airspace as soon as the first COVID-19 patient was identified, but it did not.
The second opportunity was to mandate everyone that arrived in the country be taken to an isolation centre for at least 14 days.
The third window was to request and require all those that came into the country in March to self-isolate from family and friends, and public gatherings. Nigeria was too slow.
In its weekly editorial on April 17, the NCDC said the lockdown strategy introduced late March was important because it availed the country the opportunity to promptly detect and treat cases, limit local transmission of disease, enhance contact tracing and efficiently use resources and improve sample collection.S
