Coronavirus testing stops in 13 states, Delta variant hitting unvaccinated Nigerians

There were indications on Thursday that at least 13 states had stopped testing for COVID-19 despite the impending third wave of the disease propelled by the highly infectious Delta strain.

Epidemiological data obtained from the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control showed that since the first case of the Delta variant was reported on July 8, 2021, only about 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory had been sending reports to the NCDC.

These came to the fore on Thursday as data from the NCDC showed that the COVID-19 tests reduced from 735,573 to 521,738 in three months amid warning by the Federal Government that Delta variant was spreading among unvaccinated Nigerians.

The NCDC, on its website revealed that 735,573 tests were conducted between January 10 and April 11.

But between April 11 and July 11, 521,738 were conducted representing a reduction of 213,835 (29.08 per cent).

As of January 10, 1,121,484 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in the country while 1,857,057 tests were conducted as of April 11.

While 1,857,057 were conducted as of April 11, the figure rose to 2,378,795 on July 11.

The states that have been sending updates include Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and the FCT.

The 13 states that have not sent any results to the NCDC in the last two weeks include Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Ebonyi, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara states.

The PUNCH also observed that among these 13 states, only Yobe has sent an update to the NCDC in the month of July. This implies that 12 states have not sent any COVID-19 status update in over three weeks.

It was learnt that no single COVID-19 infection had been reported in these 12 states in the month of July despite the rising number of cases in 23 states and the FCT. This may imply that the 169,884 cases recorded in Nigeria may be far from reality.

Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Rilwan Mohammed, confirmed that the state had not been conducting tests.

In an interview with one of our correspondents, he said, “We have been testing but for the past two weeks, we’ve not tested because we have a lot of challenges on the issue of testing.

“Some of the challenges are that the reagents are not available. There is the problem of electricity and the diesel is not there (to power the generators), a lot of issues. These are may be reasons why we are not testing in Bauchi,” he said.