Why Nigeria needs to act now!

Still smarting from the outbreak of COVID-19 that took humanity by storm in 2020, the world panicked again, with the rise of the virus in China. The country has a month ago reversed the restrictions of the zero-covid-19 policy. After this U-turn, hospitals in major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong have been filled with COVID-19 patients. Experts say around 250 million people are reported to be infected in the first three weeks of December 2022.

Health data from Henan province, which recorded 88.5 million people, out of a population of 99.4 million, were infected with the virus as of January 6, bolstered by a Peking University study that said 900 million Chinese were infected as of January 11. Hospital lobbies in cities are already crowded with patients, some on the floor, waiting to be admitted. As hospitals struggle to cope, most schools and businesses have closed. The situation was so dire that doctors and nurses infected with the virus were forced to work, despite their weak condition. About 5,000 deaths and one million infections are reported daily in China, said Airfinity Ltd, a UK-based analytics company.

The details are shocking given that China has censored the daily publication of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The state crematorium was overwhelmed. As the COVID-19 situation escalated, China, ironically, lifted all restrictions on foreign travel; act privacy shame Greek gift. At World Health Organization (WHO) and many countries are concerned about Beijing’s usual opacity in public health disclosures. WHO’s emergency director, Mike Ryan, stressed that, “We still don’t have the full data.” The organization just made a global appeal to use face masks, regardless of the epidemiological situation.

Unwilling to be affected by COVID-19, as it happened in 2020, many countries have imposed bans or outright bans on people traveling from China. Among them is Morocco, which has banned all flights from China. Italy, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Ghana, India, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Israel, Taiwan and South Korea and Qatar are now subjecting all travelers from China to testing. In a series of tests, Italy found that 50% of passengers on two flights from China to Milan had COVID-19.

The dreaded sub-variants of Omicron – XBB and XBB 1.5 – are described as highly contagious, evading the immune system, and appearing in many Western countries, causing an increase in hospitals and shortages of basic medicines. As of December 31, 2022, the US reported about 40% of cases of COVID-19, up from 1% previously, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is worrying that Nigeria is not on the list of countries responding to the latest COVID-19 conundrum from China. Nigeria runs the risk of being easily exposed to importers and businessmen flooding China and many Chinese people here. The Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said it is monitoring trends in countries with high volumes of traffic to, and from, Nigeria, assuring the public that the Omicron sub-variant has not been detected in the country.

Tentativeness is an objection because the accident can cause the state. In addition, it is different from the adviser of the Nigerian Academy of Medical Sciences, who warned that the country cannot afford the spillover from the increase in cases of COVID-19 from China. A statement from the President, Professor Oladapo Ashiru, called for Nigeria to “immediately tighten its borders with strict restrictions on flights from China via Qatar, Ethiopia, South Africa and other airlines.”

Nigeria should not wait until it is overwhelmed. Our health system is in dire straits, compounded by the mass exodus of doctors and nurses to Europe, America and Asia. A virus that has killed 3,155 Nigerians and infected 266,450 others, as of January 2023, must be considered an existential threat. Globally, about 6,692,002 deaths and more than 661 million infections have been recorded during the period under review.

As in many parts of the world, the COVID-19 data is not a true reflection of the reality on the ground as many cases go unreported. Nigeria is notorious for not keeping records of deaths and their causes, except for those that occur in hospitals. The world has witnessed at least three waves of COVID-19. While some countries are aggressively testing to understand the extent of infection and transmission, Nigeria is struggling to set up several molecular biology laboratories just for testing. Many residents still deny the existence of the virus and hesitate to take the COVID-19 jabs.

This situation, perhaps, explains why the number of infections and deaths in Nigeria is the lowest in the world, among countries with a population of 200 million. For example, while Brazil’s previous COVID-19 death toll stood at 682,549, Nigeria had about 3,000 deaths. The status quo remains. The explanation of Dr. Muktar Mohammed of the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19, that the relaxation of the new restrictions “because of the great pressure on us,” should invite public attention. The actions of the Committee should not be dictated by social or political “pressure”. As of December 11, 2022, a total of 102,292,641 vaccine doses have been administered in Nigeria, according to the WHO Dashboard on COVID-19 vaccination. This means that the year 2022 ends with countries failing for two consecutive years to reach the WHO’s 70% vaccination threshold, which is required to achieve herd immunity in a given population.

If extraneous factors, rather than objective conditions, corralled the TPSC to relax the restrictions, it shows that the knowledge and handling of the past three waves of COVID-19 has been suspect. The notion that came out of the previous wave of COVID-19 was not clinically or scientifically based. It underscores that the country’s challenge to contain these pathogens is daunting and enormous.

With China angry and threatening to retaliate against countries that impose restrictions on people traveling from its territory, Nigeria as a big debtor to the Asian giant may not be able to muster the courage, like other countries, to prevent the spread of the virus. from China. PREMIUM TIMES believes that Nigeria must have the courage to protect the interests of its people.

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As a result, Nigeria must test all flight passengers from China and other countries who have been infected with the virus for the fourth time. It is clear that no country will recover from the economic crisis caused by the virus in 2020. The resurgence of the pandemic will cause untold hardship. So in the public interest, regular hand washing and sanitation, use of face masks in public places, and covering the nose when sneezing, among other COVID-19 health protocols, should be observed.

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Citizens also have a role to play in this. The best defense against the virus is still taking the recommended dose of the vaccine. Nigerians should be aware of the symptoms of COVID-19 like flu, fever, headache, cough, sore throat, persistent sneezing, and loss of sense of smell and appetite as indicators of exposure and infection. After that, urgent medical attention will be essential to prevent the vulnerability of many people to the rising and gory statistics of COVID-19.