There is improved awareness on measures to prevent contracting the coronavirus awareness among the populace in Maiduguri metropolis, a health officials has said.
This, according to the official, is in spite of the fact that there is an increase in the number of people who contracted the virus in the current second wave.
Thus, deaths associated with the disease and severity of symptoms such as shortness of breath, runny nose and chest pain have decreased, as confirmed by authorities, the Head, Case Management Team, University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Dr Ibrahim Kida, stated.
He said COVID-19 death rate at the end of the first wave in September 2020 had reached a sobering 17 per cent due to lack of awareness.
Conversely, the death rate in the second wave of the pandemic had approached zero even as the transmission rate was seemingly higher.
He said most of the cases in the first wave were severe due to lack of awareness and ‘late presentation’, adding that patients died with the disease within 24 hours after positive test.
The hospital is said to have recorded about 92 cases, including a number of deaths between April and September last year due to lack of knowledge and awareness about the infection and spread.
There were about 70 cases between December 2020 and January, 2021 and ‘virtually’ no death.
