From 1,000 in eight weeks to 9,000 in five weeks — how Nigeria hit 10k COVID-19 cases

The COVID-19 cases in the country are now more than 10,000.

But that is not the main gist. It took only five weeks after the first 1,000 cases for Nigeria to reach that mark — and this is not because the country’s testing capacity has tremendously improved.

TheCable studied situation reports of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and found out the country’s testing capacity still hovers around 1,000 at least and 2,000 at most.

Statistics suggest the steep increase is simply because the infection is spreading rapidly, and more tests would have meant much more cases.

Nigeria’s first case of the coronavirus was recorded on February 27  — an Italian who travelled to Lagos and Ogun states.

Contact tracing subsequently began in other to isolate those the index case came across, but the borders were still open and travellers — Nigerians and otherwise — still trooped into the country.

After the index case, it took a stretch of eight weeks before Nigeria crossed the 1,000 mark, recording 1,182 COVID-19 cases as of April 25.

Six days after, it hit 2,000 cases and recorded another 1,000 in five days, and another in three days.

The infection rate continued to increase faster up to Sunday when the country recorded 307 cases to cross the 10,000 mark.

SO, IS NIGERIA WINNING OR LOSING THE BATTLE?

Although Nigeria still performs relatively low number of tests — the World Health Organisation recommends mass testing especially as some cases are asymptomatic — when compared to other countries, indices such as mortality rate show the country is performing above average in Africa.

For instance, its fatality rate is still at about 3 percent while many African countries such as Egypt (with fatality rate of 4.1 percent) and Algeria (at 6.9 percent fatality rate) have recorded worse fatalities.

Boss Mustapha, secretary to the government of the federation and chairman of the presidential task force (PTF) on COVID-19, said on Sunday Nigeria is “winning” in its response to the pandemic.

While that might be a hasty conclusion, caution must be exercised as the country now considers reopening schools and churches which have been shut down for more than two months to curb the spread of the disease.