Emerging Realities Behind Kogi's Claim Of Being 'Covid-19 Free'

Emerging information may have disputed the claims of Kogi State government under Alhaji Yahaya Bello that Kogi State is 'Covid-19 free'.

An investigation launched by Pioneer editor of Nigerian online newspaper TheCable, Fisayo Soyombo, showed that samples of patients who exhibited symptoms of Covid-19 in the state are not allowed to be sent to Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, even when some of them died in Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja and Kogi State Specialist Hospital.

It was gathered that on Saturday, one patient died at the Federal Medical Centre, FMC, Lokoja, after showing known symptoms of COVID-19.

Despite showing the symptoms of COVID-19, his samples weren't taken which made it the fourth times such death will occur at FMC last week alone. Samples of patients who exhibited such symptoms weren't allowed to be taken either dead or alive.

According to the investigation, the first case happened on March 22 with a patient who came from Lagos State and required a CS.

The patients who showed symptoms of COVID-19 forced the hospital management to request that she should be tested. The request was turned down and the patient was isolated for time before carrying out her surgery without testing.

A further investigation revealed that within last week, there were patients in the O&G ward of the FMC, Lokoja, who suffered respiratory issues, the known difficulty in breathing amongst other COVID-19 symptoms. Three of the patients died again without any sample test carried out on them. The investigation revealed that they all came from private hospitals; one came from Lokoja, one in Okene and the third one in Ogudu community.

According to the investigation, the first amongst the three patients was a 43 year old woman who arrived the hospital on Thursday and goes by the initial, Mrs GI with a temperature of 38.8°C.

The second patient also had a temperatures of of above 40°C. Surprisingly, no sample was taken for the two patients.

The third one who came on the last day of the week was admitted to the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Ward and had a temperature of 40.3°C. The patient was later transferred to the male surgical ward and only managed to spend three hours there before he died.

On the same vein, another patient showed symptoms of COVID-19 on Thursday and every move to collect his samples were turned down. Unfortunately, the patient died yesterday.

The Lokoja FMC supposed to notify the Ministry of Health of every need to collect sample for testing but because of bureaucratic procedures, they need to get approval of the incident Manager who is the Commissioner for Health who relates with the NCDC directly. This has been the challenges.

once the Commissioner says no, that means there will be no request and unfortunately, state hospitals are not in a position to speak with health ministry. It was also gathered that the state government has given an instruction that there should be no testing.

The instruction is premised on three reasons; the first Is the that fact that none of the three isolation centres in the state is ready for use. Both the ones at SDG/FAREC Clinic and at Kogi State Diagnostics Centre and the third one at Maimuna and Usman Yahaya Foundation are not ready for use.

In Kogi State, the only ready space is at Kogi State Specialist Hospital, Lokoja where Lassa Fever cases were handled. Sadly, it has only four beds, just four beds. The rest are just structures without any equipment for the doctors to use.

The second reason reason is also the fact that the state has no money to give as palliative if the state should go on total lockdown.

Thirdly, the state government believes that the NCDC has politicised the COVID-19 cases and feared any sample send to them must return positive and Kogi will be declared as COVID-19 State, hence, the reason it refused to send any sample for testing and verification.