95 to 98% of coronavirus patients will recover – NCDC

The Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Chikwe Ihekweazu, say 95 to 98 percent of coronavirus patients will recover irrespective of medical intervention, depending on where they are.

“Many patients are asymptomatic and will recover,” he said in Abuja on Wednesday at a briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

“The only reason we are keeping them in isolation and treatment centres is to prevent transmission to others as much as possible. Five to 15 percent depending, on where they are, will become severely ill and some will, unfortunately, pass away,” he added.

He warned that every state of the federation is at a high risk of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said: “So the idea that moving from one state to another qualifies you to be at higher risk really is no longer the case.

“The measures recommended globally are the same measure we recommend for everyone. Therefore, whatever measures we have to do, we have to do it collectively, whether you are in the North, South, East or West.”

The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, said the renewed efforts by the NCDC to do more aggressive testing were also responsible for the increased cases recorded.

He said: “Concerning the increased number of cases, there is the notion that community transmission is going on very strongly and therefore, increasing the cases of those infected with COVID-19 and giving you something to find.

“It’s also due to the improvement in testing and case finding. There’s a renewed effort to do more aggressive testing by the NCDC, house-to-house testing and following any clusters that are of interest to increase the testing and to get more cases.

“We are going to order for over 100,000 cartridges of the GeneXpert machine through the Global Fund facility that we have through the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM).

“Also, if we’re able to get the biosafety cabinets for 26 of them ready, we can boost the number of activated GeneXpert machines in the country.’

He said the GeneXpert machines have four modules which allows for testing of  four samples at a time and that the good thing about them is that they give results in a much faster time of within 45 minutes to one hour.”