NCDC: 1,179 COVID-19 patients have no link to confirmed cases

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says 1,179 COVID-19 patients out of Nigeria’s 2,170 cases have no epidemiologic link.

This implies a rise in community transmission.

An epidemiological link to a case is defined as one that “has either been exposed to a confirmed case, or has had the same exposure as a confirmed case (e.g. eaten the same food, stayed in the same hotel, etc)”.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre in Ireland also gives six criteria for determining epidemiologic link during the incubation period of COVID-19 as “human to human transmission, animal to human transmission, exposure to a common source, exposure to contaminated food or drinking water, environmental exposure and laboratory exposure”.

A breakdown of the other cases in the NCDC report showed that 210 patients had travel history, 593 were contacts of confirmed patients, while 188 persons were tagged “incomplete”.

Concerns have been raised by the NCDC and the Lagos state ministry of health in recent times over increase in community transmission.

At a press briefing on April 6, Akin Abayomi, commissioner for health in Lagos, said the state recorded an increase in local transmission; at the time, Lagos had recorded 120 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

“At the end of week 4, 82% of the patients imported the disease from abroad while 18% had no travel history. By the end of week 5, 45% of the patients have no travel history. This shows that the importation is decreasing and local transmission is increasing,” he had said.

Lagos currently has the highest figure with 1,006 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Weeks after Abayomi’s briefing, at the April 22 presidential task force on COVID-19 briefing, Osagie Ehanire, minister of health, also confirmed that community transmission was increasing across states.

“The role of primary healthcare is very important in this exercise in the sense that now we are in the community transmission phase. Now that it has gone to community level, it is really down at the grassroots and the role of the primary healthcare comes into play,” he said.

As of May 1, 2020, 16,588 samples have been tested, with 829 samples tested in the past 24 hours.

Kogi and Cross River are yet to record any case of COVID-19.