COVID-19: Nigeria at risk of community transmission, WHO warns

With confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria reaching a hundred, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, has warned that the country is at risk of community transmission of the virus except government increases investment in public health interventions.

Noting the tendency for the nation’s health system to be overwhelmed with a growing number of cases, he emphasised that it was best for the nation to cut the line of the spread of the virus by public health interventions and ensuring Nigerians adhere to WHO guidelines on COVID-19.

Ghebreyesus who sent this warning from WHO headquarters in Geneva, at the weekend, stressed that the country will arrest a continued spread of the virus by stepping up efforts in testing, identifying those with the virus, contacts tracing and isolating them.

Emphasising that following up and quarantining people will get difficult when the case continues to build, Ghebreyesus enjoined government at all levels to scale up public health interventions.

“You need to do the public health interventions effectively, to test cases, follow up contacts and isolate the cases so the problem doesn’t grow meaning from the sporadic cases or clustered cases will not grow into community transmission.

“The problem comes when community transmission starts when the number of cases builds. When that happens, then doing the public solutions with the follow-up, quarantine and so on will be difficult, if not impossible.

“But at the same time, the growing number of cases means the health care system could be overwhelmed too. So, that is why for Nigeria, the best option is to really cut it from going bad and while you have a small number of cases, to invest more in the public health interventions and do the things we have always been saying from the start as WHO and preventing it from becoming community transmission,” Ghebreyesus said.

ALSO READ: Dangote tests negative for coronavirus

The WHO chief also stressed the need to leverage the power of community-based surveillance; empower and engage with communities, civil societies, local governments and all the government approaches.

Meanwhile, incident manager for the COVID-19 task force in Oyo State, Dr Taiwo Ladipo, on Sunday, said the task force had located 34 out of 87 persons who may have put themselves at risk of contracting the virus.

Speaking with Tribune Online, he said the task force had taken the samples of more than 10 of those “persons of interest” and expected their results from Sunday.

“We have seven confirmed cases in Oyo state. We are monitoring all our cases even the ones we are about bringing into the isolation ward. The suspected cases are under isolation.

“We have about 87 persons of interest right now. We have been able to locate 34 of them. We are trying our possible best to locate the others. We have more than 10 samples taken.

“We might get that result today because we sent to the samples to some of our facilities around,” Ladipo said.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE