By Chioma Obinna

Medical experts have reacted to the recent spikes in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country, saying Nigeria was far from flattening the curve.

In separate interviews with Vanguard, the experts maintained that the country should braze up for the worst if drastic measures are not taken urgently as regards uniformity in the containment of the disease.

The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, had Sunday announced new 89 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with Lagos alone having 70 new cases.

In the views of Dr. Casmier Ifeanyi, Publicity Secretary, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria, AMLSN, with the community-driven transmission it cannot be scientifically said that the country including Lagos is flattening the curve.

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“The curve is not flattening because we get all our results in retrospect. Our laboratory test results for COVID-19 testing are turned-in in arrears. The value known today is actually what it was in a minimum of five days before the announcement.

“We find out that the numbers positive for COVID-19 cases have continued to increase by the day, so no one can claim scientifically that we are flattening the curve.  If we continue to get positive cases particularly in the states where we had not gotten report before like in Kano State that has just jumped from 3 cases to about 21 cases in a matter of 72 hours interval. Certainly, we are not flattening the curve.”

Ifeanyi expressed fears that the situation may get worse in the communities as COVID-19 has a binary fashion of transmission.    “For example; it spreads like this; from 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16; 16 to 32 and so on. So, any person who is discharging the virus and is within the community can on a daily basis by multiplying them in a doubling fashion and sometimes it becomes geometric.

“The worry is how did we get to this point? We did not close the borders timely. When we were supposed to close them and even when we eventually did close them we were still playing politics with the intervention processes. The laboratory testing process and the politics is still on if we continue with the politics we may never be able to flatten the curve and if community-driven infection get entrenched in Nigeria it will be very disastrous. “

He said the danger and the real fuel for community transmission were the asymptomatic persons because they will be sharing the infection without symptoms so you have no form of suspicion.

Also speaking, a renowned Virologist, Prof Oyewale Tomori, who said Nigeria was lucky that most of the cases were not severe, declared that the country may be in for a worse time yet.

Stating that Nigeria was far from winning the war against COVID-19, Tomori said: “Remember the lockdown was to flatten the ‘pot belly’ of COVID-!9. Unfortunately, the potbelly is getting bigger and we are not succeeding in flattening it.

“At the beginning of the lockdown, we had 131 cases, two weeks later, at the end of the lockdown, the number of cases went up to 343- , a little more than a two-and-a-half fold increase. Remember, the recoveries and the deaths will come from the cases.”

Likening the situation like the rain, Tomori said the rain is falling and you say it is not as much as that of yesterday, why not wait for the end of today’s rainfall.

The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Academy of Science, NAS, Dr Doyin Odubanjo who said Nigeria should be grateful that the cases in the country may not rise like in Europe added that no one was pretty sure what is going on, hence they need to search for cases in communities.

He lamented that there should be uniformity in strategies to contain the spread of the virus.

Odubanjo reminded Nigerians that after the lockdown, one of the problems would be drugs as Nigeria doesn’t manufacture the various drugs that people will need.

“We must know that people will be dying even from other things because they cannot get drugs or access to health care.  So the lockdown was good to quickly control a chaotic situation but you have to know that it must not continue like that. “

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He said the government needs to put in a lot more effort into community engagement and education in order to get people to really know what this is all about as many people in the slums under the lockdown don’t understand why they are told to stay at home.

Calling for uniformity in approach, he said the Governors and the federal government need to sit down now and work out a clear and exit strategy for lockdown and that it was time to work out a detailed, practical, and effective strategy with need to involve a multidisciplinary team led by the experts, not politicians.

“A uniform thing would have been better and even up till now; we have governors coming up with different rules. All that will not help us contain the spread of the virus.   When the lockdown started three weeks ago, there were about five or six states with confirmed COVID

File -19 cases. Right now, there are about 20 states. Right now, there is nothing that assures us that the disease is not spreading in other states.  Now there is a community transmission, when you remove lockdown in Lagos what says that some of the people in those states will not bring it back to Lagos. So it would have been better, things were done in a coordinated way.”

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