Mrs Nwando Mba, Director, Public Health Laboratory Services Department of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has revealed the blueprint for a different pandemic is being used to tackle the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the NCDC Director, who made the revelation known in a report published by Nigeria Health Watch, said immediately the disease centre understood that COVID-19 is a respiratory infection, they quickly activated the blueprint.
According to Mrs. MBA, the blueprint is the National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which serves as a blueprint for a coordinated national strategy to prepare for, and respond to a national pandemic influenza disaster.
“This became our blueprint because influenza surveillance is the bedrock of our COVID response,” said Mba, who is heading a team working to contain COVID-19 at the National Public Health Reference Laboratory in Gaduwa.
Influenza, commonly known as “the flu”, is an infectious disease caused by an influenza virus. Three of the four types of influenza viruses affect humans: Type A, Type B, and Type C. Type D has not been known to infect humans, but is believed to have the potential to do so.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve, comparisons have been drawn to influenza because both cause respiratory disease, but according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are important differences between the two viruses and how they spread, which has important implications for the public health measures that can be implemented to respond to each virus.
In 2013, Nigeria developed the National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan. The core components of the plan are tasks to be accomplished during each pandemic phase.