Coronavirus: An Open Letter To Nigerians (Part 1)
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. You can read Part 2 here.
Why am I writing this?
I felt compelled to write this letter in the hopes that I can provide some accurate information and share some thoughts about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, specifically for a Nigerian audience (both at home and in the diaspora). Worryingly, I have seen a lot of misleading and sometimes outright false information propagating via the internet and WhatsApp groups, information that can put our community at risk.
Why should you listen to me?
My qualifications are simple: I am a 5th year medical student sudying at Imperial College London. Some of the information shared here is gleaned from my clinical exposure in the previous weeks at a central London hospital and the rest has been acquired by sifting through reputable sources. I will provide links to back up my claims but overall the views expressed here are my informed opinion.
Something is not right here…
If you believe any of this to be untrue or incorrect, please leave a comment. We are all learning together.
Okay! On to the main article.
What is COVID-19?
COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2.
2019-nCOV.
These are all means of referring to the new coronavirus that emerged in 2019 in Wuhan, China. Because this is a ‘novel’ (new) virus, everybody has a chance of being infected because nobody has developed immunity to it.
The most common symptoms are a fever, a continuous dry cough and general tiredness. However some patients have reported nasal congestion, sore throat and diarrhoea. Although a lack of comprehensive testing makes it hard to determine the precise mortality of the disease, it has been estimated that about 85% of infected persons will recover without medical intervention (just like you would get better after a flu), with the remainder requiring hospitalisation and about 2% passing away due to the virus. Particularly vulnerable populations include:
- People aged over 60
- People with pre-existing medical conditions (high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, asthma, cancer or diabetes)
- People with a weakened immune system
- Pregnant women
How can you stay safe?
The individual risk of contacting this novel coronavirus is still fairly low, but that is dependent on our ability to keep the community rate of infection low as well. On the individual level, protection includes the following:
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. To help you count, sing:
Arise, O compatriots! Nigeria’s call obey
To serve our Fatherland
With love and strength and faith
Wash your hands as soon as you get to a new destination and as soon as you arrive home. Handwashing works because the virus spreads through the eyes, nose and mouth, and we touch our faces more than 3,000 times a day!
- Use a hand sanitiser gel of at least 60% alcohol but only if water and soap are not available.
- If you need to cough or sneeze, do so into a tissue, dispose of the tissue and wash your hands afterwards. If you do not have tissues then do so into your elbow.
- Do not spit in public! Do so in a bin or toilet.
- If you are a smoker, try to cut down or stop altogether.
- Avoid contact with people who have symptoms or who have increased risk of infection.
Fellow Nigerians, community-level protection is key to slowing the spread of this virus. It will require radical containment and personal sacrifices will have to be made for the greater good of the community. In Wuhan and in Italy, death rates increased because the high rate of spread meant that health services could not cope with the number of people requiring hospitalisation, so more people died. In Nigeria’s healthcare environment, limitation of community rate of infection is extremely important. As a resource-limited country, WE CANNOT HANDLE THE NUMBERS SEEN IN MANY COUNTRIES SO FAR. We simply cannot; to act otherwise is pure delusion. We do not have the staff, or the hospital beds, or the testing capacity, to manage this if it becomes a nationwide crisis.
This hinges on a concept known as social distancing. By reducing contact with other people as much as possible, infected people cannot spread the virus, and so infection rate stays low and possibly will eventually drop to zero. People with COVID-19 may not show symptoms and still be infectious, so it really is a community responsibility.
Cancel unnecessary social contacts. Reschedule your birthday party, work out at home, limit grocery shopping to once a week or every 2 weeks. Companies should really be moving to a work at home structure if possible; it is unfair to keep workers needing to come into work every day where it can be avoided. Religious institutions should also think carefully about the need to congregate physically. People in government in a position to effect these changes need to put their personal interests aside and mobilise the country in this direction. I applaud Lagos State’s decision to suspend religious services and the Federal Government’s suspension of NYSC Batch A orientation camps. These cannot have been easy calls to make. Phone and video calling tools will be very helpful in these times. Taking a walk outside should be fine, so long as you are not coming in close contact with others. Wash your hands afterwards.
There will always be people who need to go out, e.g. people whose jobs or livelihoods depend on leaving the house every day, or people whose jobs constitute a necessary public good. We need to protect those people, and our society, by staying home as much as possible so that these people can go out with reduced risk. I am not talking about hedge fund managers. I am talking about supermarket cashiers, doctors, garbage collectors, teachers (as long as schools remain open), etc. I leave each person to think about how much they need to leave the house. Drive if you can, and if you have a driver/other domestic staff you need to ask yourself how much you really need him/her to come in, especially if they do not live with you.
I am really calling on all Nigerians, especially the youth and the highly educated, to lead a pattern of behaviour that will help to protect our community from the worst of this. It will not be easy but we must try. I am aware that I am penning this from thousands of kilometres away, but I hope that this does at least some good for someone in Nigeria.
In summary: STAY AT HOME. Please. Overall, if you are unsure, lean towards the more conservative option — better safe than sorry. There is no money, no shopping, nothing that is worse than the danger we face if this disease is not contained immediately.
This concludes Part 1. Part 2 will cover whether you should be flying home at this time (you shouldn’t), whether this is truly the prophesied end of days (maybe, Bill Gates did warn us in 2015), and debunks some popular myths about the virus (no, sipping water every 15 minutes will not prevent you from getting it). If you would like any other questions answered in that article, please leave a comment.
Part 2 is available here.
Sources
