How Kogi has stayed free of Covid-19

Kogi and Cross Rivers are the only states that have not have recorded any case of novel coronavirus disease.

Expert groups including the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), have warned and questioned the free status of the state, especially as their neighbours already have confirmed cases.

The situation had pitched it against the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), a public health institute, with the mandate to lead the preparedness, detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies.

The centre and observers have pointed out that the inability of the state to record any case yet is because of the alleged reluctance of its government to open testing channel and follow laid-down protocols, warning that such attitude may lead to escalation of transmission of the virus in the state.

However, the state government has repeatedly waved off such positions, alleging pressure by certain interest to declare fictitious cases and needlessly politicising the issue.

It said contrary to widely held claims of nonchalance in the face of outbreak of the pandemic, it has been in the frontline as far as responses to public health emergencies are concerned.

“We are not new to public health emergencies even if the Covid-19 pandemic is unarguably the most trying the world has ever witnessed. We have been in an annual fight against Lassa fever as the state is located in the Lassa  fever belt, recording several cases with regrettable loses. We were first to establish a biosafety laboratory for Lassa fever in Nigeria,” the commissioner for health, Dr Saka Haruna pointed out.

He noted that the state has developed considerable experience and expertise in combating and defeating infectious disease outbreaks long before COVID-19.

Geographical disadvantage

Also, addressing the visiting NCDC team to on assessment visit to the state on Thursday, Governor Yahaya Bello said despite the state’s so-called geographical disadvantages which make it have some of the highest infectious diseases numbers each year, Lassa fever especially, the state has also had a 100% recovery rate since 2017.

“Similarly, our incidence committee for infectious diseases comprising the full complement of experts and specialisations has been on ground years before this CoviD-19 pandemic. Thus, Kogi State’s epidemic management structures were already up and running by the time the NCDC was giving guidelines to states on how to set them up,” he noted.

This, he said, helped the government to quickly put its best foot forward long before the Covid-19 was declared a pandemic.

Kogi had set up a COVID-19 and Lassa Fever Squadron Committee to coordinate the response to the Covid-19 pandemic while also stemming the tide of Lassa fever which has already killed many in the state this year.

It also developed a web application, a self-assessment tool for Covid-19 risk.

According to the governor, the app has proved to be popular and effective in “tackling fear among the populace in the face of an unknown killer disease.”

“We have had over 200,000 engagements with that app, over 14,000 completed self-assessments revealing scores of cases which required further investigation before CoviD-19 could be ruled out,” he explained.

He said Commissioner for Health, who also serves as the State Epidemiologist and other senior medical personnel have had to personally follow up on as many of the feedback cases to determine whether any of the suspected cases qualified as a CoviD-19 case.

He noted that such response laid the foundation for the state’s zero CoviD-19 status which is being sustained.

Enlightening the public

Aside these, he said the state government evolved public enlightenment strategy to ensure social distancing, handwashing and other protocols for prevention of infection.

“The Kogi State Ministry of Health has deployed health personnel to all the 239 wards of the state, two focal persons per ward, who constantly sensitize the people on the dangers of the virus, communicate news or even rumours of suspected cases to the incident committee or taskforce for investigation and also assist in contact tracing.

“We have set up three modern isolation/containment centres in the state having a combined capacity of 130 bed spaces. These facilities currently lie unused. It is our prayer and our determination that these isolation centres will remain vacant until the pandemic is over.

“We have provided emergency and toll-free numbers for the general public to call in and report suspected cases of Covid-19 at no cost whatsoever. We have also fielded many of such calls. All of them turned out to be false alarms upon investigation and did not meet the criteria from the NCDC for cases which should be sampled for testing.

“In the circumstances, we cannot manufacture cases in order to be counted among the states which have recorded same,” he noted.

“As a governor I hear there are ‘benefits’ for having CoviD-19 cases in your state, well, I am not interested.”