‘Children aren’t immune’ — NCDC seeks compliance with COVID protocol as schools resume

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has asked school owners, parents and guardians to ensure strict compliance with the COVID protocol to prevent the spread of the virus as schools resume across the country.

Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of the NCDC, said this on Monday at the media briefing of the presidential steering committee (PSC) on COVID-19, held in Abuja.

According to Ihekweazu, children aren’t immune to the virus, but may present symptoms differently from adults.

“Life during COVID has been very difficult for parents. And across the country today, this week, children are going back to school. Schools are reopening; school owners, principals are having to deal with the situation of taking responsibility for students, pupils, who might get infected, spread the virus,” he said.

“It is important to be aware that children are not immune to this disease and can get it and spread it as easily as anyone else, even if they themselves, don’t generally get severely ill. But they are very good spreaders of the virus.

“The second challenge is when they do get ill, they don’t present the way most adults present. They don’t present commonly with shortness of breath, severe fever. They don’t tell you they’ve lost sense of smell or taste. They present with very unusual, normal symptoms that are very difficult to distinguish from common cold, from what we call malaria, and if we as parents, care givers don’t take this seriously, they’ll go ahead and spread.

“We’ve seen instances of large outbreaks in schools that have gone unnoticed till one person is found positive, then we start testing and we find that a large number in that school is positive.

“Yes, even if they may not be severely ill, they’re likely to present to parents at home, teachers, guardians, all of whom may be a little bit more vulnerable to the pandemic.”

He urged schools to reach out to the NCDC for collaboration on testing using the “rapid antigen test kits”, adding that a school can be tested in a day with results available in 15 minutes.