From Segun Amure, (The New Diplomat’s Abuja Bureau)
The total lockdown implemented in Nigeria between February-May, 2020 may have helped to avert over 5.8m Covid-19 infections in the country, a team of international public health researchers said in a report released Wednesday.
The researchers drawn from institutions in the United States (Parexel International, Harvard university and Holly Hill hospital), South Africa (iSefako Makgatho Health Sciences University) and Nigeria ( Benue State University, Universities of Ibadan, Lagos and Calabar) asserted that their findings supported the use of restricted mobility as a measure for the control of infections in Nigeria.
The team pointed out that, the spike in the country’s cases during the lockdown occurred on Saturdays and Sundays which could be attributed to social events (e.g. parties [or Ówàmbē in a local dialect]) and religious activities.
The researchers further explained that their work was motivated by the need to better understand how the lockdown affected peoples’ movement and community spread of COVID-19, noting that the information could inform future public health responses to subsequent waves of COVID-19.
A statement from the team made available to The New Diplomat said the goals of the research were to measure the association of government-mandated closures and restrictions with aggregate mobility, to evaluate associations between aggregate mobility and number of individuals with laboratory confirmed SARS-COV-2 infections and to estimate the number of SARS COV-2 infections that may have been averted.
“Most countries including Nigeria (Africa’s largest economy and the most populous country), responded accordingly, and part of the Nigerian government response included socioeconomic and public health interventions to reduce impact of the pandemic.
“Socio economic interventions included providing cash transfers, lines of credit and food assistance to poor and high-risk households, while public health interventions included government-mandated closures and restrictions on schools, social gatherings and all forms of transportation (locally referred to as lockdown),” the team said.
The cross-sectional study found that government-mandated closures and restrictions in Nigeria owing to COVID-19 was associated with significantly reduced aggregate mobility everywhere (except in residential areas) and may have averted up to 5.8 million corona virus infections.
According to them, community spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria may have been faster in residential areas , transit stations (e.g. motor parks) and workplaces (including likely venues of social events).
While stressing that “our findings support the use of restricted mobility as a measure of infection control in Nigeria should there be additional COVID-19 waves in the future”, the researchers pointed out that “restrictions on movement are unsustainable in the long term, and that “future closure and restrictions, if warranted, need to be more effective.”
While making recommendations for the Nigerian government, the researchers “suggested areas of improvement include tougher restrictions on movement and more robust contact tracing in residential areas, transit hubs and workplaces, greater testing capacity and more political support for testing; greater access to COVID-19 data for policy and process evaluation to identify opportunities for efficiency gains: and more personal responsibility above and beyond the public health campaign dubbed the 3 Ws (i.e washing hands (or using hand sanitizer regularly wearing a cloth mask over the nose and mouth, and waiting 6 feet apart (or social distancing).”
