The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has allayed the fear of Nigerians on the outbreak of Marburg Virus Disease in the country has it said, COVID-19, Monkeypox and others are under surveillance control.
In a tweet on its verified handle, @ncdcgov reads: “There is currently NO outbreak of #MarburgVirusDisease in Nigeria.
“However, measures such as heightened surveillance, diagnosis & rapid response teams are in place to prevent & mitigate an outbreak of the disease in-country.”
Meanwhile, an internal memo from the Management of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital signed by its Deputy Director of Information, Sani Suleiman to notify the staff and the entire hospital community about the outbreak of Marburg and surge in COVID-19 disease was posted on social media
It reads: The Management of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital wishes to notify the entire hospital community of an outbreak of Marburg disease and upsurge in COVID 19 infection.
“Consequently, the attention of all Head of Departments and members of staff is hereby drawn to ensure adequate surveillance and hygiene by observing all protocols of prevention.”
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“Please circularise for more information as “prevention is better than cure. More details will be sent on our various social media platforms on the OUTBREAK in due course.”
When contacted on phone by Tribune, the Deputy Director of information of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Sani Suleiman said the memo was misunderstood adding that it was meant to remind the staff on the basic hygiene to prevent disease outbreaks such as Marburg, COVID-19 and others
According to him: I’m the author of the memo to sensitise the staff and the hospital community but unfortunately, that memo was misconstrued, it’s meant to be an internal memo within the hospital community for our staff to be conscious incase there is an outbreak or in case patients are coming to the hospital for treatment”.
“They didn’t post the precautionary measures, rather they just posted the memo. So, it was misconstrued by one of the staff. In fact, the hard copy has not even gone out.”
“It was meant for the hospital community to be conscious of the disease. You know some people are still negligent of the COVID-19 and if the hospital personnel are not taking precautionary measures, it will spread”.
“We are just sensitising them to be conscious. So it’s not like there’s an outbreak. We haven’t recorded any case of Marburg. People should disregard it and we are going to follow up with a correction.” He added.
NCDC had on July 19, 2022, published on its website which reads: “Based on available data, the overall risk of both importations of the disease and its potential impact on the Nigerian population is said to be Moderate as assessed by NCDC experts and partners given the following: the proximity (same region), high traffic from Ghana and countries that share borders with Ghana, the incubation period of 21 days of the virus, heightened surveillance at point of entry, Nigeria’s capacity to respond to the outbreak in the country and the fact that persons with MVD transmit the virus when they become symptomatic unlike for SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 that can also be transmitted by infected persons without symptoms.
It further reads: “Nigeria has the capacity to test for the virus presently at the National Reference Laboratory in Abuja and the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital laboratory Centre for Human and Zoonotic Virology. Diagnostic capacity can be scaled up to other laboratories if required. Nigeria has the resources (human, technical and laboratory) for prompt identification and management in the event of a single imported case.”
“However, the risk of importation may be further reduced as the current situation in Ghana is under control as reported by Ghana Health Service. Active case finding is ongoing in Ghana while there is heightened surveillance in Togo and Benin. Therefore, the response situation may change in the coming days with the control efforts in Ghana and advisories as may be issued by the World Health Organisation.”
On surge in COVID-19 cases, the summary on the NCDC showed that from 6th August to 10th August 2022, 517 new confirmed cases were recorded in Nigeria.
It indicated Akwa Ibom State recorded highest cases as in the latest report in the 517 new cases from 14 States- Akwa Ibom (293), Lagos (101), Rivers (54), FCT (13), Ekiti (11), Delta (9), Kano (9), Bayelsa (7), Kaduna (6), Oyo (5), Abia (3), Kwara (2), Nasarawa (2), and Plateau (2)Kano (4), Niger (2), Plateau (2), Abia (1), Bauchi (1), and Bayelsa (1)
To date, 262,402 cases have been confirmed, 256,006 cases have been discharged and 3,147 deaths have been recorded in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory
A multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continues to coordinate the national response activities
The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency in his speech at the launch of the SCALE strategy to ramp COVID-19 vaccination disclosed that as of 8th of August 2022, the number of eligible persons who are fully vaccinated currently stands at 27,703,573.
Therefore, the proportion of the total eligible population that have been vaccinated in Nigeria is 25%.
The Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 and the Federal Ministry of Health through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency have come up with SCALES 3.0
SCALES 3.0 is an evidence-based update that fixes the bugs in SCALES 2.0 and uses human-centred demand generation design to address low COVID-19 risk perception in the country.
The strategy retains integration of COVID-19 vaccination with other PHC services but uses an implementation approach that seeks to address bottlenecks on service delivery, communication, accountability, logistics, EMID and supportive supervision from bottom-up and state-specific contexts.
On Monkeypox, the NCDC website summary also showed that sixty (60) new suspected cases were reported in Epi week 31, 2022 (1st to 7th August 2022) from nineteen (19) states — Ebonyi (8), Abia (5), Adamawa (5), Ondo (5), Taraba (5), FCT (4), Imo (4), Lagos (4), Ogun (4), Edo (3), Anambra (2), Gombe (2), Kwara (2), Rivers (2), Cross River (1}, Oyo (1), Kano (1), Nasarawa (1) and Niger (1)
Of sixty (60) suspected cases, fifteen (15) new confirmed cases have been recorded in Epi week 31 from ten (10) states — Imo (3), FCT (2), Ondo (2), Rivers (2), Abia (1), Anambra (1), Ebonyi (1), Edo (1), Ogun (1) and Nasarawa (1).
From 1st January to 7th August 2022, there have now been 473 suspected cases with 172 confirmed cases (115 male, 57 female) from twenty-seven (27) states — Lagos (20), Ondo (16), Adamawa (13), Rivers (13), Delta (12), Bayelsa (12), Edo (9), Nasarawa (9), Anambra (7), FCT (7), Imo (7), Plateau (6), Taraba (5), Kwara (5), Kano (5), Abia (4), Cross River (3), Borno (3), Oyo (3), Gombe (3), Katsina (2), Kogi (2), Ogun (2), Niger (1), Bauchi (1}, Akwa Ibom (1) and Ebonyi (1).
Four (4) associated deaths have been recorded from 4 states in 2022 — Delta (1), Lagos (1), Ondo (1) and Akwa Ibom (1).
Meanwhile, a group of global experts convened by WHO has agreed on new names for monkeypox virus variants as part of ongoing efforts to align the names of the monkeypox disease, virus and variants—or clades—with current best practices as the experts agreed to name the clades using Roman numerals.
According to a statement by the WHO, current best practice is that newly-identified viruses, related disease, and virus variants should be given names with the aim to avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups and minimise any negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare.
“Consensus was reached to now refer to the former Congo Basin (Central African) clade as Clade one (I) and the former West African clade as Clade two (II). Additionally, it was agreed that the Clade II consists of two subclades”.
“The proper naming structure will be represented by a Roman numeral for the clade and a lower-case alphanumeric character for the subclades. Thus, the new naming convention comprises Clade I, Clade IIa and Clade IIb, with the latter referring primarily to the group of variants largely circulating in the 2022 global outbreak”.
“The naming of lineages will be as proposed by scientists as the outbreak evolves. Experts will be reconvened as needed. The new names for the clades should go into effect immediately while work continues on the disease and virus names.” The statement reads.
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