The Executive Chairman of Adamawa State Primary Health Care Agency, Dr. Suleiman Bashir, faulted the format used by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control in representing COVID-19 cases.
He said Adamawa had been testing but none returned positive. According to him, the reporting format used by the NCDC doesn’t usually reflect details, particularly the number of tests conducted by states.
He said, “The issue is not whether the states have not been testing. We are testing but we don’t get positive results. I think they are two different things because the report by the NCDC only reflects the number of positive cases leaving out the corresponding number of tests conducted. It should be that if for instance there are five COVID-19 cases reported for Yola, the data should be able to reflect that the test result is five out of 1,000 sample tests conducted.”
The state commissioner of health, Professor Isa Abdullahi, who also commented, said the state had been testing but results remained negative.
But a professor of virology, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, lamented the failure of many states to report COVID-19 cases to the NCDC.
Tomori, in an interview on Thursday, said it would be difficult to track the COVID-19 cases in the country when many of the states had failed to conduct tests.
He said, “We were aware of the incompleteness of the NCDC daily reports, with only about 13 of 36 states testing or reporting. It is not just dangerous, it is irresponsible. If over 50 percent of cases are asymptomatic and not reporting for tests, then you know we have a major problem with the actual number of cases we have.
“The less we know, the more our ignorance about the true state of COVID-19 epidemiology and our inability to respond fully, actively, timely, and responsibly. Data, though incomplete, show that between week 25 and week 30, the COVID-19 positivity for both inbound and outbound passengers doubled per week. The outbound figure tells about the rate of community spread, while the inbound figure is about the importation of the disease. This may better provide the true situation of COVID-19 in Nigeria.”
