The Nigerian Centre For Disease Control has responded to the viral video of people who were said to have tested positive to COVID-19.
The health organization said the people who were seen dancing and playing in the viral video are ill and are only staying healthy by being happy.
The NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu said the disease does not weaken its patients compared to other diseases that do and in responding to a question on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday, 21st of May, he said;
“I think people really need to understand why people are being put in these centres. Normally, you only go into a hospital when you’re ill, get a diagnosis, and then you are sometimes admitted if you’re very ill.
“But in this case, following the experience from other countries, we made a decision as a country to also put people in isolation Centres not just because they are ill on their own but in order to stop them from transmitting this virus to others.
“When I travelled to China in late February or early March, things were put in place for these people (in quarantine), so they could exercise and dance because it is not easy to be somewhere, in isolation for three to four weeks when you are not physically ill.
“So, these are things we have to use to reassess our decisions. It is very difficult to make decisions based on one viral video. One Whatsapp video does not represent the experience of people across the country. It is very important that as leaders we are not pushed down a decision path because one video happened to go viral. Many people in these Centres around the country are complying.”
According to a report on PUNCH NG, the D-G of NCDC added that they would have loved to separate the patients that are not showing any symptoms of the disease caused by Coronavirus away from the ones that are actually displaying the symptoms and needs extensive care, but they figured out that kind of system can’t work due to the complex nature of Nigeria and her population.
