MUSINGS ON CORONAVIRUS

As a solution, the ANAP Foundation Think Tank headed by Mr. Atedo Peterside is suggesting that where one-room dwellings are prevalent, the authorities should encourage the separation of the elderly who are more vulnerable in the event of COVID-19 infections from younger members of their families. This, the foundation recommends, will entail disparate families cooperating with one another. What the foundation is proposing is for, say, Family A to vacate their room but leave behind their aged relatives in that room and encourage other elderly relatives living with, say, Family B in another single room to move into the unit belonging to Family A. After vacating their single room, younger members of Family A will now move in to live with Family B younger family members in the single room vacated by their elderly relatives, and so on and so forth.

However, when Peterside was confronted with the impracticality of encouraging unrelated families to live together temporarily, his response put paid to any initial reservations. He asked: “When confronted with the choice of seeing thousands of people die because they want to hold on to their old living arrangements and seeing fewer die because of temporary living arrangements, which would you choose?” It was pretty obvious which of the choices, no matter how inconvenient, made sense. Another option will be to move the elderly to the rural areas. But that should never be contemplated by the authorities, as this could lead to the spread of COVID-19 to far-flung villages and hamlets that will be much more difficult to access.

Enforcing the lock down in many states, especially in congested parts of Lagos is also proving to be a tall order for the authorities. People who have to leave their homes daily to eke a living are afraid that keeping them indoors will render them completely destitute. This is a genuine concern that the Lagos State Government is attempting to address by distributing food packs to the impoverished. Sadly, this has been marred by its officials and politicians who are either diverting the food packs for their personal use, or where the food packs manage to get to the poor, utter chaos and mayhem ensures, effectively defeating the need for social distancing.

The government in Lagos State must address this problem urgently. It will have to work out measures to ensure that the palliatives it has rolled out for the poor reaches them, if they must keep them indoors. If the initiative fails, poor and hungry Lagosians will succumb to their primal instincts for survival by leaving their homes to look for food and money through any means possible, including resorting to looting and riots that will be difficult to contain. Equally important is the need for the authorities in Lagos to use megaphones in markets to educate traders and shoppers alike. Videos emerged at the weekend showing bustling, chaotic scenes at food markets in the state like it was business as usual. While it may be necessary to keep markets and shops selling food and other essential items open for limited periods, the state government must, through the market associations, maintain discipline and work with them to stem the spread of the virus. Should it explode, we will remain shuttered for much longer. I shudder to think of what a prolonged lock down will do to our psyche, mental well-being, and an already battered economy.

Optimizing Scarce Resources

Another area worth looking into is the need for all tiers of government and the health authorities to stem the waste of limited resources at their disposal needed to confront the Coronavirus. While not wishing the virus on anyone, it is disheartening to see top government functionaries and politicians such as the Central Bank of Nigeria governor Godwin Emefiele, Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his family, the Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, and Senator Musiliu Obanikoro announcing that they have tested negative for COVID-19.

If these scare and precious testing kits are being wasted on otherwise healthy-looking government functionaries and the rich, what will be left for ordinary Nigerians that need to be tested? As I write this, so many people trying to reach the COVID-19 helplines are not getting the attention that they need. If anyone in government feels that he/she may have come in contact with an infected person, the same NCDC protocol of self-quarantining for 14 days that applies to other Nigerians should also apply to them, period! During the period of self-quarantine, they can continue to work from home and run their offices. It is only when they start to show symptoms for COVID-19 that they should submit themselves for testing. Otherwise, the testing kits should be preserved for others that need them the most.

It is important to reiterate that this is not a time to be flippant and to start broadcasting the names of persons that have tested negative for COVID-19 like it is a badge of honour. When these same persons test negative for other diseases after medical check-ups, the public is kept in the dark. Accordingly, they should keep their COVID-19 negative status to themselves. The only persons that the public needs to be made aware of their health status, be it negative or positive, is the Nigerian president and his deputy.

The health authorities may also have to review the protocol for the admission of every person that tests positive for the Coronavirus as we run out of bed space in hospitals and isolation centres. As is evident, many persons, even the elderly such as The Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, was never hospitalized after he showed mild symptoms and tested positive for the disease. He self-isolated and recuperated at his Scottish retreat on the grounds of Balmoral Castle, but was never hospitalized. So did the UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock who tested positive but is now negative and is out and about; so is British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is self-isolating and recovering at Number 10 Downing Street; so is CNN anchor Chris Cuomo who is self-isolating in the basement of his home in New York.

The reason many people with COVID-19 are self-isolating at home in Europe and the US instead of being treated in hospitals is because of the scarcity of bed space, ventilators and other medical supplies that are desperately needed to treat severe and critical cases afflicted by the disease. Knowing that 80% of COVID-19 cases will be mild, what the authorities in those countries are doing is encouraging people to self-isolate and take palliative medications to relieve and treat the symptoms that they are presenting. In the same breath, the Nigerian authorities may have to consider the same measure, seeing that quite a number of the confirmed cases in the country so far are mild. But this measure should only be contemplated if the number of confirmed cases in the country explodes to unmanageable proportions and the healthcare system is over-stretched.