Director General (DG) of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu has reacted to some Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients who recorded themselves dancing and having fun, the video of which has been trending on the social media.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the NCDC DG as saying it was not easy to be somewhere in isolation for three weeks, four weeks, and sometimes, more, and when you are not ill, stressing that it was very difficult to make decision based on one viral video, saying one WhatsApp video doesn’t represent the experiences of people across the country.
According to the Dr Ihekweazu, in China and other countries, things were organized for people in isolation centre so that they could exercise, dance or practice, saying it is just that our context is different.
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“It is very important for Nigerians to understand why people are actually being put in isolation centres. Normally, you only go into a hospital when you are ill. And so, when you are physically ill, you go in, you get diagnosis, and sometimes, you are admitted in the hospital, if you are very ill. So, you are only then admitted if you are very ill physically.
“In this case, following the experience from other countries, we made a decision as a country to also put people in isolation centres not just because they are ill on their own but in other to stop them from transmitting this virus to others. This is the experience we got from China very early on in their outbreak. They did used similar measures to control spread, and many other countries have done that.
“Now, it is very difficult, and there have been a lot of backlash because people in these centres are often not as physically ill as you would think hospitalized patients should be. It was the same thing in China. It is just that our context is different. When I travelled there, I think it was in late February or early March, things were organized for people in these places so that they could exercise, dance or practice, because it is not easy to be somewhere in isolation for three weeks, four weeks, and sometimes, more, and when you are not ill.
“It is very difficult for people to stay in hospital when they are not physically ill and we understand that. It is very difficult to make decision based on one viral video. One WhatsApp video doesn’t represent the experiences of people across the country. It is very important that we as leaders we are not pushed down a decision path because one video happened to go viral
“Many people are in these centres around the country. They are complying, they are doing their very best, because they understand the responsibilities they have, not just to us but to their own families
“If you take this virus out into the community, the people you are most likely to infect, are those that you love the most. They are your family, your friends, your work colleagues, the people you interact with
“So, across the country, 95% or so, understand why they have to be in treatment, understand why they to be in isolation, and are complying. So, I don’t want us to be forced down a decision path because two people managed to do a great video that spread virally, and that is the responsibility of leadership,” Dr Ihekweazu said when he appeared on the Channels TV Sunrise Daily programme on Thursday.