local: NMA is shockcked at Kogi’s reluctance to test for COVID- 19

Nigeria has screened 19,512 individuals with 2,948 confirmed cases and 98 deaths around the country as of Tuesday night.

The association of doctors in Kogi State expressed concern about Kogi State's reluctance to check suspected coronavirus cases.

Kogi is one of the two states yet to confirm any case of the virus since the country recorded its index case in February. The other state is Cross River.

In Kogi, the government of the state is intentionally discouraging COVID-19 tests and has alleged that there is a conspiracy by unidentified persons to ensure that Kogi records cases of the virus This attitude of the government of Kogi has irked the association of doctors in Kogi who warn that it could be risky.

The Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Kogi chapter, Kabir Zubair, in an interview expressed fears that the consequences of not testing people for the COVID-19 may be too enormous to deal with.

“If the state is not testing anybody despite having many suspected cases, it only translates that there may be more cases to deal with later and we don’t know where they are now.Community transmission will be inevitable. And this could only spell impending doom,” he said.

Similarly, last month, Chikwe Ihekweazu, the Director-General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), expressed disappointment with the number of samples brought in for testing from states that had yet to report COVID-19 cases.

an’t hide this. Eventually, it will emerge. There is absolutely no doubt that there are people that have pneumonia, acute respiratory infections in your states,” Mr Ihekweazu said.

In what appeared a reaction to Mr Ihekweazu’s statement, the Kogi State Government alleged there were “recent pressures from some interesting quarters for Kogi State to find and declare cases of the disease.”

In a Tuesday statement by its commissioner for information, Kingsley Fanwo, the state alleged plans to ‘import’ cases of coronavirus into the state through illicit means.

The Kogi government said it would not manufacture cases to satisfy the expectations of unnamed health officials, amidst allegations, including by a journalist, that the state has recorded deaths from the virus at a Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in the state.

Mr Fanwo, in a phone interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday, said nobody had died from the disease in the state.

He said the FMC “is owned by the federal government and controlled by the federal ministry of health.”

“It is your duty as journalists to discern fake news from facts. Kogi has no case of COVID-19 or deaths relating to that,” he said.

Asked how suspected cases were being detected without testing, he said the state had developed a self-assessment app around the NCDC’s checklist for ‘suspected and high-risk cases.’

He said more than 200,000 people had accessed the app but when investigations were carried out, no case had been identified as ‘high-risk.’

He concluded by saying "we track them to their homes when they fill out the questionnaire on the app, and have a personal interview with them. The team of health experts take it from there with the supervision of the state epidemiologist who reports to the governor and then to the NCDC. If they claim that there is no case, then there is no case.