Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General, NCDC, said this at a briefing by the Presidential Job Force on COVID-19 on Monday in Abuja.
Ihekweazu stated that the country recorded a 36 percent decrease nationally in August, compared to July, while the positivity ratio dropped from 20 per cent in June to 7 percent in July.
” You may think that is good news and we ought to be commemorating; regrettably, we can not commemorate this till we test enough numbers in every state in the nation.
” One crucial problem is the variety of tests being done and yes the number of tests have in fact declined, but another crucial indicator that we take a look at is the test positivity ratio nationally,” he said.
According to him, the only states that can with confidence celebrate a decrease in cases are Lagos and Kano, in addition to the FCT, since they have checked high numbers, but the very same can not be said at the national level since some states are not testing.
He decried that the NCDC might not make any interpretation on the data in Taraba, Adamawa, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Kebbi, Zamfara, Jigawa, and Yobe.
” We do not have adequate data coming out of these states to ascertain if we are enhancing or not or where exactly we are.
” So we need to interact, in summary; it is way prematurely to make any analysis whether we are flattening the curve or not, some analysis can be made in Lagos, FCT, since they are testing enough, but we can’t do this on a nationwide level.”
The NCDC manager noted that countries that seem to have actually seen a decrease were seeing a renewal of cases.
The News Firm of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NCDC and the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research Study (NIMR) have actually launched COVID-19 household sero-prevalence surveys in picked states in Nigeria, to much better understand the concern of the virus in the country.
The surveillance will be performed in Gombe, Enugu, Nasarawa and Lagos States.
Comments
Post a Comment