On January 23, 2020, the World Well being Group’s Worldwide Well being Laws (IHR) Emergency Committee suggested that “all international locations ought to be ready for containment, together with lively surveillance, early detection, isolation and case administration, contact tracing and prevention of onward unfold of 2019-nCoV an infection, and to share full information with WHO.” On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a public well being emergency of worldwide concern.
In 2017, through the WHO’s Joint Exterior Analysis (JEE) of IHR core capacities (an unbiased, collaborative multi-sectoral effort to evaluate a rustic’s capability to forestall, detect, and reply to public well being dangers), Nigeria scored poorly each in prevention and response.
These scores recommend that Nigeria shouldn’t be ready to answer the present COVID-19 pandemic. That is most clearly evident from the low testing charges for COVID-19 within the nation. Nigeria at present has the capability to check solely 2,500 samples a day, and simply half of those are literally administered every day due to the scarcity of human assets, testing kits, and laboratories, and case definition for testing that prioritizes symptomatic circumstances and their contacts. As of June 30, solely 138,462 samples had been examined in Nigeria for a inhabitants of 200 million; in distinction, South Africa—a rustic of 58 million folks—has already carried out 1,630,008 assessments.
Nigeria had simply 350 ventilators and 350 ICU beds for its total inhabitants earlier than the outbreak. In April 2020, the nation acquired 100 extra ventilators, however given the rising caseload, this won’t be sufficient. There was a steady rise within the variety of circumstances and deaths in Nigeria, and no flattening of the curve has but been noticed.