Failure of the Nigerian government to meet its own target to test 2 million citizens for Covid-19 in three months shows the country does not have the pandemic under control yet and infections may spiral out of control, experts have said.
This is coming as some communities in the Federal Capital Territory and Kogi State have begun reporting more deaths from unknown cause in the last few weeks.
On 28th April, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), in an effort to aggressively ramp up Covid-19 testing across the country, said it would vigorously expand testing to 2 million whithin three months. NCDC said it was setting the target considering how the World Health Organisation (WHO), experts and scientists have repeatedly stressed that testing is the only way to bring the pandemic under control.
But as the NCDC deadline ends on Tuesday, July 28, 2020, the disease control agency has only beennable to test 253,495 people for the disease within the timeframe.
In total, Nigeria has only managed to test 266,323 people since February when the first case was recorded. Of the number, 40,532 came back positive, 17,374 have recovered, while 858 lives have been lost to the virus, according to data from the NCDC. Nigeria still lags behind other African countries on testing.
Nigeria’s health authorities have repeatedly said the country has capacity to conduct 3,000 and even 10,000 tests daily, but tests conducted per day mostly fall below 2,000 across 59 laboratories till date.
Obeche Adamu, a public health analyst, described the performance on the target as a gross failure, compared to the country’s population of over 200 million. He warned that community transmission will continue to increase and put more pressure on the already weak health systems as well as the economy.
“The number of tests conducted so far is very poor, even the set target is nothing compared to the Nigerian population. This only means that infections will surge, the economy will continue to suffer, because human development has an effect on the economy.
“Also food crisis will worsen, because if the virus worsens the agrarian sector will be directly affected,” he said.
Adamu further disclosed that a community in Kogi recently recorded a surge in strange deaths suspected to be COVID-19.
“At my last visit, the residents complained that the number of burials whithin the last week climbed over 100 which is unusual”, he said.
Similarly, some residents of Bwari Area Council, FCT have described the number of deaths in the last few weeks as worrisome.
Adamu added that the situation will be further compounded by the high level of ignorance amongst Nigerians despite all awareness efforts by government.
Adaobi Onyechi, a laboratory scientist, noted that the inability of government to test enough already means they lack focus on how to manage the situation much more to flatten the pandemic curve.
She decried that if Nigeria does not ramp up testing, the virus will last longer and overwhelm institutions further.
Patrick Dakum, CEO, Institute of Human Virology Nigeria, agrees, saying that Nigeria would be in the dark as far as burden and geographic spread of the disease are concerned which will make prevention and containment efforts difficult and escalating the situation.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, NCDC DG, however, said government has made efforts to ramp up testing, including incorporating private sector laboratories, reconfiguration of HIV and Lassa fever laboratories and conversion of GeneXpert machines to test for COVID-19 as well as door to door sample collection in hotspot communities.
He said the test target was only a guide to enable the centre aggressively scale up testing. Ihekweazu said the testing in itself is not the goal, but rather to to bring people into care through testing and enable contact tracing to happen for those who are positive and generally move the system along.
He noted that when the target was set, some ststes were resisting testing.
“We are not where we are going yet on the target, what we’ve done is to mobilise the entire country to improve response. But every state is at least coming foward to test,” he said.
According to Ihekweazu, the target gave focus on what needs to be done.
Emeka Oguanuo, risk communication officer, NCDC, admitted that the centre knew the target could be impossible to meet whithin the timeframe.
He balmed the failure on Nigerians’ reluctance to show up for testing. He added that states are either not mobilising enough for sample collection or not complying with directives on testing which is scuttling efforts to meet the target.
Oguanuo explained that low sample collection by states was the biggest threat to the targert. He said these samples are not only grossly inadequate, but poorly handled sometimes which amounts to a waste of efforts .
Ramatu Abdu-Aguye, head of contact tracing team at FCT, said stigmatisation, widespread ignorance and political sentiments are reasons why Nigerians are refusing to show up for testing. She noted that these challenges have also made contact tracing much difficult.
Health experts are however optimistic that the use of rapid diagnostic test kits would increase testing.
