More than 40 health workers have tested positive for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria. This was disclosed by Health Minister Osagie Ehanire at a press briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja; as Nigeria’s coronavirus cases increased to 981 on Thursday with a single-day discovery of 108 new cases confirmed by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Lagos has the highest number of confirmed cases on Thursday night with 78 cases. Nigeria’s capital city Abuja has 14 new case, while Ogun State got five new cases. The spread of the virus intensifies in Gombe State, with the state recording four new cases. Three new cases was discovered in Borno State, two new cases in Akwa Ibom State. One new case each was discovered in Kwara and Plateau States. “As at 11:30 pm 23rd April there are 981 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria,” NCDC tweeted.
NCDC said 197 persons have been so far discharged, while 31 persons have died from the virus.
The Health minister appealed to health workers to take all necessary precautions in dealing with coronavirus patients for their own safety. He said the government would continue to provide the necessary personal protective equipment for them, but that they must remain vigilant. “Please do not try to treat patients without using adequate PPE. Frontline workers must undertake refresher training in IPC at intervals,” he said.
Ehanire said many other health workers had had to be quarantined in the past week due to exposure and were unable to join the health sector’s efforts to fight the coronavirus disease as a result. “I urge you all to remain vigilant in the line of duty and maintain a high index of suspicion,” he appealed. The minister further disclosed that the government had tested 9,522 samples since Nigeria’s index case was detected in February. According to him, the country is currently testing an average of 600 samples a day in all 13 labs, but operational efficiency will be improved upon to step up testing.
Besides, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued safe Ramadan practices in a document in the context of COVID-19. The WHO said the document highlights public health advice for social and religious practices and gatherings during Ramadan that can be applied across different national contexts and that cancelling social and religious gatherings should be seriously considered.
WHO, therefore, recommends that any decision to restrict, modify, postpone, cancel, or proceed with holding a mass gathering should be based on a standardized risk assessment exercise. It said if cancelling social and religious gatherings, where possible, virtual alternatives using platforms such as television, radio, digital, and social media can be used instead and if Ramadan gatherings are allowed to proceed, measures to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission should be implemented.
And as Nigeria today joins the rest of the world to mark the beginning of the World Immunisation Week (WIW), April 24-30, the WHO warned against shutting down immunisation services to prevent a resurgence of diseases that can be prevented with safe and effective vaccines. The WHO, in a statement yesterday, said: “when immunisation services are disrupted, even for brief periods during emergencies, the risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, such as measles and polio, increases.”
It said last year’s deadly measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which took more than 6000 lives in a country already facing its largest Ebola outbreak, highlighted the importance of maintaining essential health services, such as immunisation in times of emergency and that further disease outbreaks would also overwhelm health systems already battling the impacts of COVID-19.
WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Disease outbreaks must not remain a threat when we have safe and effective vaccines to protect us. “While the world strives to develop a new vaccine for COVID-19 at record speed, we must not risk losing the fight to protect everyone, everywhere against vaccine-preventable diseases. These diseases will come roaring back if we do not vaccinate.”
Also, the United States government says it has spent about $21.4 million in assistance to Nigeria over the COVID-19 pandemic. It said it gave assistance through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Department of State. The U.S. Embassy in Abuja, which disclosed this yesterday, said about four-fifths of the expenditure (about $18 million) were on humanitarian assistance.
According to the embassy, the benefiting sectors include those for risk communication, water and sanitation activities, infection prevention, and coordination, and humanitarian assistance for refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and their host communities.
“The U.S. government is leading the world’s humanitarian and health response to the COVID-19 pandemic even while we battle the virus at home,” U.S. Ambassador, Mary Beth Leonard, said in a statement yesterday. Our assistance is rolling out gradually as we reconfigure priorities in response to the evolving situation,” the envoy added.
This funding, she explained, would support critical activities to control the spread of the disease, such as rapid public-health information campaigns, water and sanitation, and preventing and controlling infections in health-care facilities. She cited two early examples of USAID assistance to Nigeria as support for the country’s centre for disease control by sending a million SMS messages a day to Nigerians and going door-to-door in the Northeast to prevent outbreaks in the country’s most vulnerable region.
