Virologists and other health experts on Wednesday warned that low COVID-19 testing by state governments was dangerous to the battle against coronavirus. The experts stated this in separate interviews with The PUNCH as the Nigerian Medical Association attributed the recent surge in coronavirus cases to the reopening of schools without necessary preparations.Commenting on the low testing, a molecular virologist at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Dr Joseph Shaibu, in an interview with our correspondent, stressed the need for the country to do more.
Shaibu said doing more tests would give the country the full picture of the COVID-19 burden.
He said, “Before we can say whether the virus is everywhere in the country or not or before we can pinpoint the high-burdened area, we need to test. If we don’t test, we won’t know where to pay more attention to as far as the management, control and preventive measures to put in place are concerned.
“For example, there are some states that we don’t even know whether there is COVID-19 there or not. It is difficult to put preventive methods in such states. So long as they are not testing, people are not aware that they are living with the virus and as such it will be spreading and the vulnerable ones will be dying of the virus. But if adequate testing is going on, it alerts the people that the virus is with us and makes people to maintain the preventive measures.”
“Even if we want to do vaccination, it is testing that defines the high-burdened areas that will dictate where to pay more attention to. You cannot just carry vaccine that is not enough and start vaccinating everybody.”
source: Punch
