Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye and Fred Ezeh, Abuja
More than 50 per cent of the “mysterious” deaths recorded in Kano in April may have been triggered by undetected COVID-19.
Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, who made the disclosure at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja, yesterday, said the discovery was contained in the report of the ministerial task team sent to Kano to support the state’s COVID-19 response with commodities, training, technical and confidence building measures.
He said the report confirmed that 979 deaths were recorded in eight municipal areas and the peak was in the second week of April.
He also confirmed that “by the beginning of May, the death rate reduced to 11 per day. The verbal autopsy revealed that about 56 per cent of deaths had occurred at home while 38 per cent were in a hospital. Most fatalities were over 65 years of age.”
Ehanire affirmed that the ministerial task team extended its fact-finding visit to five other states to offer support and training.
“With the observations and recommendations from the three-week assignment, the committee developed a Strategic Incident Action Plan to strengthen coordination capacity of the health workers and improve community engagement in line with our response plan,” he said.
He also confirmed that, “while over 150 health workers had been infected at the time of the arrival of the team, there was no report of infection among health workers who had received training on infection prevention and control, thus restoring confidence.
“Evidently, the intervention of the ministerial task force was a huge game changer for Kano and some northern states.”
FG announces new protocols, makes u-turn on home care
The Federal Government also announced new protocols for evacuating Nigerians stranded abroad as a result of the pandemic.
FG had on May 27 suspended all evacuations of Nigerians stranded abroad over the COVID-19 pandemic pending when new protocols on testing will be in place.
The National Coordinator, Dr. Sani Aliyu, who announced the new protocols said Nigerians returning home will be required to undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing within 14 days of their travel date.
Prior to boarding, they will also be required to, sign an undertaking to make themselves available for a repeat PCR test within 72 hours of arrival. They will be required to stay in their city of arrival (Abuja or Lagos) for a period of 14 days of self-isolation, at their own cost (this isolation can be at home). There will be supervision by health authorities during the isolation. He said the PTF was completing the revision of the protocols for evacuation of Nigerians abroad.
“We are working hard to ensure we get it right, and also make best use of resources available to us, so that the 4,000 Nigerians who want to return home can do so.”
Aliyu said the feeding and accommodation of returnees in isolation can no longer be sustained.
He said Nigerian missions abroad will coordinate and provide clearance for the evacuation. He said emphasis will be on people in challenging circumstances: short term visitors, those on medical and official trips, family holidays, pregnant women, the elderly and students.
No date yet on reopening schools
Minister of State Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has described reports that schools would re-open on June 21 as fake news.
He assured that any news on reopening of school would be communicated through the PTF.
“Any reopening of school would involve the advice of expert on when it is safer to reopen schools. This is to avoid the mistake of shipping the student in and out of school,” he said.
Nwajiuba insisted that the ministry would not lead Nigerians into danger because it was in a hurry to reopen the schools, and that it would only reopen when it was safe to do so.
“Of all the thing I will love to do is that I will not want to experiment with your children. What we are planning is to bring those that will be exiting from Junior Secondary to Senior and those who will be writing the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) to write their promotion exam.
“We are however looking at when the inter state lockdown will be reopened so the children can move to write their exam in their schools,” he said.
Nwajiuba said that the ministry was studying the time table to know when it would be convenient as soon as there was ease on inter state lockdown.
NCDC set for 200,000 daily tests
The nation now has enough reagents to test 200,000 samples, across all the laboratories in the country, Director-General NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, has said.
He said the centre will now focus a lot of its response over the next few weeks on the states and the set of professionals (epidemiologist) that work in every state that have had to take on a lot more responsibilities.
He said in many states, there were also the incident managers of the emergency operation centres and they are the heart of the collaboration with the state’s.
The NCDC boss also said the centre was working with the World Bank to design some high-impact interventions that will get support, which would lead to building an agile, flexible workforce for health security that will be responsive and able to react, use technology, have the best access to diagnostic and really make sure that we are much better position to prevent, detect and respond.
More deaths may occur from antibiotics abuse, WHO warns
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the continued abuse and unauthorised use of antibiotics to treat COVID-19 may cause antibiotic resistance by some bacterial infections over time.
This is even as it added that more people may die during and after the COVID-19 pandemic because the available antibiotics may be insufficient and able to treat their infections.
It has, therefore, reiterated that the choice of antibiotics must be based on the clinical diagnosis, local epidemiology, and antibiotic susceptibility, as well as the treatment guideline.
WHO Country Representative, Dr. Fiona Braka, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased use of antibiotics, which ultimately leads to bacterial resistance, that will ultimately increase the burden of diseases and deaths during the pandemic and beyond.
“New antimicrobial resistance data released by WHO shows that globally, a worrying number of bacterial infections are increasingly resistant to the medicines at hand to treat them. We also know that based on evidence, only a small proportion of COVID-19 patients do need antibiotics to treat subsequent bacterial infections.
“The organisation has released new clinical management guidelines not to provide antibiotic therapy prophylaxis to patients with mild COVID-19 or to patients with suspected or confirmed moderate COVID-19 illness, unless there is a clinical indication to do so.”
Mental health programme for victims, families begin
Meanwhile, the process of integrating comprehensive psychological services programme into its activities through the provision of mental health care to help people cope with stress and isolation has commenced.
Chairman of Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, said since the commencement of the national response, a lot of priority has been given to physical health management of people who are affected.
He emphasised that a great majority of Nigerians are still susceptible to COVID 19, warning that “if we allow it to transmit easily between us, it may be even more deadly. If everyone diligently observes the guidelines, we can collectively control the spread of the virus, and help to protect our health facilities as well as save lives.”