Close to three years, precisely May 5, 2023, after the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that COVID-19 was no longer a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), meaning that the crisis phase was over globally, the dreaded virus appears to have stealthily stolen in again.
A new case has been confirmed in Cross River State. A Chinese national, an employee of Lafarge in Akamkpa Local Government Area of the state, has reportedly tested positive to the COVID-19 virus, stirring a new wave of fear and scare.
The Chinese national was said to have arrived in Nigeria on March 17, 2026. He started manifesting the symptoms of the virus around April 10, 2026, which was believed to be well beyond the standard 14-day incubation period.
The patient was referred to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) after his condition worsened at a local facility where he was first taken to for treatment. The infection was confirmed at the UCTH. The case was identified as the first significant one in the state since 2022.
This is really troubling in view of the grisly experience of Nigeria and the entire world with the pandemic. It was an unprecedented global health holocaust. All through 2020 and beyond, global health lay prostrate, as death became a daily ritual and health experts hit their wits’ end in their quest for elusive solution.
More troubling is the inscrutable nature of the latest case. How did the Chinese national contract the virus? The incubation period for the virus is said to be 14 days. The patient arrived Nigeria on March 17. The symptoms appeared around April 10, clear 25 days interval!
Health officials, including the Cross River State’s epidemiologist, are suspecting that the patient must have contracted the virus in Nigeria rather than during travel. The poser then is: How did he contract it?
This is the puzzle health authorities must quickly address in order to effectively ‘entrap’ the fresh case by tracing every of the Chinese national’s contacts and everywhere he has visited since arriving in the country with a view to preventing the evasive virus from spewing out of control this time.
It is gratifying that steps are being taken in this direction as the patient, who is reported to be in stable condition and responding to treatment, was immediately isolated at UCTH.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Henry Ayuk, said emergency response measures were immediately activated, while rapid response teams were despatched to Akamkpa LGA. Ten individuals who came into contact with the Chinese worker were then identified, isolated and placed under close monitoring.
“We were able to identify 10 contacts of the patient. We have isolated them and are closely monitoring them. None of them has come down with symptoms,” Inyang Ekpenyong, the state epidemiologist, said.
The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC),the agency responsible for managing health emergencies in the country, Dr. Jide Idris, threw more light.
He said: “Following the confirmation of the case, the Cross River State Ministry of Health, in coordination with NCDC and with support from partners, has activated response measures, including contact tracing, surveillance and infection prevention and control.
“All identified contacts are being followed up appropriately and there is no evidence at this time of widespread transmission.”
These are laudable steps. We only hope that the contact tracing is exhaustive enough and the patient is honest enough to disclose everyone he has had contact with and everywhere he has visited.
Our health authorities should pull all the stops to prevent the widespread of the virus transmission this time. We cannot afford a recrudescence of the nightmarish devastations the last COVID-19 crisis phase visited on the country and the rest of humanity.
The pandemic that kept the world bedwrangled for a long time stole in like a joke on January 30, 2020 when WHO formally declared the human coronavirus disease (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The name COVID-19 was coined to reflect the year (2019) the virus was first found in humans.
Nigeria was identified as one of the 13 high-risk African countries for rapid COVID-19 transmission and was among the hardest-hit countries based on the burden of COVID-19.
The first COVID-19 case in Nigeria was discovered in Ogun State on February 28, 2020. Due to the proximity of the state to Lagos, the index case soon moved to Lagos, which then quickly became the epicenter of COVID-19 in Nigeria, accounting for 50% of all cumulative cases and deaths.
An emergency response was activated by the NCDC and a presidential task force set up to respond to the pandemic with each state having an emergency operating center. The first case was managed at the Lagos state infectious disease isolation center.
A national lockdown was set in motion from March, 2020 to June, 2020. Surveillance was ramped up at all levels, including the portals of entry. These measures were effective in flattening the epi-curve.
In resource-limited settings such as Nigeria where health systems are fragile, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was enormously grave. It further weakened the fragile health system of the country despite the huge investments made by the government and the private sector to curb the shock of the pandemic.
Non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions were deployed by the NCDC in Nigeria in line with the WHO recommendations, which included social distancing measures, wearing of face masks and hand hygiene.
The challenges were far reaching and resulted in economic, social and political disruptions across the globe, including Nigeria. Over 223,887 COVID-19 cases were notified as of December, 2021.
The Nigerian economy was hard hit by the pandemic, as the lockdown imposed on the nation led to huge economic losses, disruptions in supply chains and an overall increase in the number of Nigerians who lived below the poverty line of less than 1.90 dollars a day.
Students, private businesses and farmers were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic due to the restriction of movements and uncertainties. The lockdown totally trammelled Nigerians except those on essential services.
A state of dysphoria, doom and gloom pervaded the atmosphere during the period. Nigerians, especially the vulnerable population, went through an unprecedented spell of deprivations, hunger and misery.
Although palliatives in terms of food items were provided by the Federal Government to cushion the impact of the lockdown, as was done in other parts of the world, much of those items did not reach the vulnerable population, who really needed them, due to tardiness and outright wickedness on the part of many government officials through whom those palliatives were channelled.
Most of the palliatives were either distributed to selected and favoured cronies or locked up in private homes and warehouses in many of the state capitals. Some state governments even went to the ludicrous extent of repackaging the palliatives and converting them into campaign items.
Hence, hunger killed almost more people during the lockdown than the pandemic itself. Thousands of workers, both in the private and public sectors, lost their jobs, as firms and business concerns had to downsize. Scores of those who were unable to weather the unprecedented economic headwinds,shut down outright.
Many Nigerians are yet to completely recover from the socio-economic fractures thrown up by the pandemic.
It is noteworthy that unlike diseases that can be fully eliminated from a country for a period, COVID-19 has kept circulating globally. According to health experts, even when case numbers dropped sharply, the virus was still present at low levels and could still spread.
Health authorities in Nigeria continued to detect cases even after the emergency phase had ended. In fact, the NCDC was still monitoring new subvariants of the dreadful virus and reporting cases up to 2023.
The NCDC had de-escalated emergency measures since 2022 and begun managing COVID-19 as part of normal infectious disease surveillance. Dr. Idris hinted that the detection of the fresh case highlighted the effectiveness of existing surveillance systems, urging the public to remain cautious and adhere to basic health guidelines.
This is welcome. But let NCDC and ally agencies handle the latest case with utmost care and professional tact to prevent it from escalating into another emergency.
