…Say another lockdown’ll lead to global economic crisis
BY BRIGHT JACOB
Medical practitioners in Nigeria have continued to disagree on the placing of travel bans and flight restrictions on the countries where the new Covid-19 variant (Omicron), have been reported.
While some noted that the government should shut the borders of the country so as to stop further spread of the virus in the country, others have insisted that there is no cause for alarm.
Last week, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reported that two cases of the Omicron variant had been confirmed in the country.
According to the NCDC, individuals involved were Nigerians who came into the country from South Africa.
Tunde Ipaiye, a World Bank consultant who worked as the lead expert hired by the World Health Organisation to write a global fund proposal for Covid-19 in Nigeria, said there was absolutely no need for Nigeria to panic or to place a travel ban on South Africa, where the new variant was first reported.
Ipaiye, who was the immediate past Commissioner for Health in Ogun State, also told The Point that viral mutation was not an unexpected term within pandemic control.
“Even if you place a travel ban, for instance, on flights from South Africa, what is the assurance that the virus is not in the other countries you have allowed into Nigeria? How are you also sure that someone will not come from other countries like the United States or United Kingdom, where they have also reported it?” he asked.
Ipaiye insisted that instead of imposing travel restrictions, what ought to be done was to have an active surveillance, just like the NCDC had begun to do.
“If not for their (NCDC) surveillance and the ability to do a secondary analysis and genomic sequencing of the samples gotten from the positive clients, they wouldn’t have known. If they can continue to do this and are able to contain the mutation from time to time, there will not be any need for a lockdown,” he added.
Like South Africa which reported the new variant on November 24, Ipaiye said that there was nothing bad when Nigeria reported its own case, too.
He disclosed that the NCDC, after collecting samples, and seeing the positive test result, sent the same for sequencing, which indicated that the virus was not the regular Delta variant, but the Omicron variant.
Ipaiye also said that no country in the world was prepared for another lockdown because it would lead to a global economic crisis, which would make it difficult to contain the virus.
He advocated for more push so that vaccinations could be scaled up, as it was needed to attain “herd immunity” to reduce new mutations.
According to him, those who have been vaccinated usually develop artificial immunity, which also offers protection against any kind of mutation or modification to the virus and which contributes to the reduction in the number of Covid-19 related deaths.
“Even if you place a travel ban, for instance, on flights from South Africa, what is the assurance that the virus is not in the other countries you have allowed into Nigeria? How are you also sure that someone will not come from other countries like the United States or United Kingdom, where they have also reported it?
“
He, however, berated the global community because the western world had “gotten their people almost fully vaccinated, but the vaccination coverage in all African countries is still less than 10 per cent.”
When asked whether the vaccines would be effective against the Omicron virus, Ipaiye explained that as the virus tried to replicate itself, an abnormality or error in its DNA might occur “that will enable it to bring an offspring that is a bit different from the parents.”
“It is like two black people giving birth to an albino. So, even if you have a slight modification due to an error, it does not take away the entire spectrum of the response of the initial vaccines,” he said.
He further pointed out that it was at the level of recovery that there might be a little change and that nobody even knew whether the vaccines might work better for Omicron than for the previous variants, or it might be a slight reduction in the capacity to work, “because it’s not an entirely different virus.”
“It is the same virus that has appeared in a new form. Against the new variant, it may be like something reducing from 100 per cent to about 90 per cent,” he said.
He therefore allayed the fears being created globally, describing them as unnecessary.
He warned that other variants would eventually surface, whether the world liked it or not. He reminded Nigerians to maintain social distancing and avoid huge gatherings.
He recalled when the Delta variant was first reported, and how people also panicked.
“Now, Delta is history, and it’s now Omicron that is in full effect. Tomorrow it will be something else,” Ipaiye said.
Babafemi Adenuga, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine, and former Special Adviser on Health in Ogun State, and consultant, Family Physician at Marcelle Ruth Specialist Hospital, Victoria Island, Lagos, agreed with Ipaiye.
He said that Nigeria was not relatively ready for another lockdown from an economic standpoint, or from a health care perspective, even if the country had gone through a lockdown before and had a template it could easily tweak.
He also corrected the misrepresentation among people who thought that the Omicron variant originated from South Africa.
According to him, the virus was first discovered by scientists in South Africa.
He also said that there was no need to restrict air travel from South Africa, and that where the restriction was needed was on the areas where the virus originated from.
He observed that nobody was talking about restricting flights from the United Kingdom where the virus had also been reported, but that people were saying that flights from South Africa should be restricted.
However, another medical practitioner, Rotimi Ogungbe, a fellow of both the West African and International Colleges of Surgeon, and Medical Director at Joseph and Christiana Specialist Hospital, Abeokuta, agreed that Nigeria should “tread carefully and shut her borders.”
“We need to protect our people. Since we don’t fully know whether the vaccines will cover the new variant, and for precautionary measures,” he said.
Continuing, Ogungbe noted, “That was part of what caused the problem in Nigeria. When we were supposed to close our borders, we threw them open for people to come in. That was the reason we had the high incidence of Covid-19 in Nigeria. If we had acted proactively, I think we would not have had such a high number of people getting infected.”
On whether the vaccines would likely work effectively against any kind of variant, Ogungbe said, “That is their belief. But of course, if it doesn’t work, what happens? Unless more research is conducted, we may never know these things. Covid-19 has killed so many people and we don’t want to take a risk.”
Other public health experts said that Nigeria must double down in its vaccination drive to curb new variants coming.
A Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Mansir Oche, said achieving herd immunity would go a long way.
Speaking on factors responsible for low vaccination and government efforts, Oche said the Nigerian government had done a lot in getting people into its vaccination programme, adding that it was time for people to act.
“I think the government has done much. Let’s see how people respond to it. You know that people that want to go abroad must be vaccinated. So probably, the group of people who go abroad every time or are anticipating to go are likely to be vaccinated, or somebody whose family member has died of COVID-19 will want to take care of the vaccine. So I think these are the factors that probably push people to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” he explained.
The Nigerian government must essentially minimise community transmission, said Ebut Agbor, a public health doctor and Vice-President of Medical Initiative for Africa.
“The mitigation of cross-border transmission will require a cautious approach and review,” he noted.
He said the government must carefully consider border screening activities, post-arrival screening, proper documentation of patients who arrive in Nigeria through (air, land or sea) and deploy technology to ensure a friendly approach to tracking and management.
He added that self-isolation, self-reporting, observations of simple infection control measures and organising support for the suspect and confirmed cases would be a win-win situation.
The African Union Vaccine Delivery Alliance C-Chair, Ayoade Alakija, described the action of the countries banning travel to some African countries as politics, noting that those countries did not equally announce travel bans to some countries outside Africa, where the new COVID-19 variant was found.
“These travel bans are based on politics, and not on science. It is wrong. Why are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents?” Alakija asked.
“Africa CDC strongly discourages the imposition of travel bans for people originating from countries that have reported this variant. In fact, over the duration of this pandemic, we have observed that imposing bans on travelers from countries where a new variant is reported has not yielded a meaningful outcome. Rather, implementing PHSM (Public Health and Social Measures) should be prioritised,” African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The United Kingdom has said that travellers from Nigeria will not be permitted to enter the United Kingdom beginning from Monday, December 6, 2021, as a result of the growing concerns over an outbreak of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
This is coming a few days after Canada extended its travel ban to travellers who recently visited Nigeria.
The UK Health Minister, Sajid Javid, said only residents and citizens of the UK and Ireland travelling from Nigeria would be allowed entry into the region, adding that they would have to quarantine on arrival.
The official said the measures were required to slow the spread of the new variant while scientists worked to understand more about the transmissibility and implications for vaccine effectiveness of the variant.
“In light of the most recent data, we are taking further action to slow the incursion of the Omicron variant.
“A Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Mansir Oche, said achieving herd immunity would go a long way
“
“From 4am Monday, only UK/Irish citizens and residents travelling from Nigeria will be allowed entry and must be isolated in a managed quarantine facility,” the statement said.
Anxiety had followed Nigeria’s discovery of its first cases of the Covid-19 Omicron variant, technically known as B.1.1.529 lineage
The NCDC, in a statement by Ifedayo Adetifa, its Director-General, on November 30, said the variant was detected in two Nigerians who arrived in the country from South Africa the previous week, through the genomic sequencing of positive cases from routine day two.
“Retrospective sequencing of the previously confirmed cases among travellers to Nigeria also identified the Omicron variant among the sample collected in October 2021.
“The two recent cases, though asymptomatic, have been linked to clinical care, and other response activities which include contact tracing have commenced. Arrangements have been made to notify their country of origin to commit-country entry response,” the statement said.
The detection of the Omicron variant was first announced by South African scientists on November 25, sparking a flurry of flight bans on Southern Africa by wealthier countries.
The Netherlands announced on Tuesday that it found the new Omicron variant in cases dating back as long as 11 days, indicating that it was already spreading in Western Europe before the first cases were identified in Southern Africa.
The World Health Organisation had designated it as a “variant of concern,” urging global leaders to bridge the vaccine inequality gap to contain its spread.
Despite the low vaccination rate, Nigerian health authorities said efforts were in place to strengthen surveillance in the country and curb its spread.
But health experts warn that the development may be complicated with Nigeria’s low vaccination rate.
So far, Nigeria has administered 9.85 million vaccine doses, with 3.52 million persons being fully vaccinated, representing 1.7 per cent of its population.
Nigeria had missed the September deadline for the global vaccination goal of inoculating 10 per cent of each country’s population.
South Africa, where Omicron was first announced, was among the 15 African countries that reached the global target, vaccinating at least 24.3 per cent of its population by November.
About 25.4 million doses have been administered, with 14.4 million people being fully vaccinated in South Africa.
Despite this, many Western countries banned flights to South Africa. The flight bans are now being extended to other African countries, including Nigeria.
On December 1, Canada announced its travel ban on Nigeria following the detection of Omicron variants in two people who recently travelled to Nigeria.
There are already concerns on whether other countries would follow suit in banning flights from Nigeria as the end-of-the-year holiday season unfolds and its attendant effects on the country’s tourism industry.
It remains unclear whether the Omicron strain makes people more severely ill than the already well-known variants, but WHO warned that shutting borders was not the best option, saying global actions such as bridging the vaccine gap must be reached as scientists rush to understand its nature.
The NCDC has also said driving down the spread requires Nigerians to observe COVID-19 preventive measures and get the vaccine.
