The World Health Organisation has said the COVID-19 pandemic might not be the last the world would witness, even as it called for sustained fight against
the virus.
Country Representative, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, disclosed this at the ninth General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Epidemiological Society
of Nigeria held in Port Harcourt.
Mulombo said the pandemic has provided Nigeria and the global community opportunity to strengthen immunisation, build capacity of health workers and strengthen
disease surveillance.
He noted: “COVID-19 pandemic has taught us a great lesson on preparedness. It is not yet over. It may not likely be the last pandemic. Therefore, we must
sustain the tempo.”
Earlier, Chairman, Local Organising Committee of EPISON’s ninth AGM, Dr Omosivie Maduka, said the event was imperative to evaluate the epidemic and intelligence
tools used in the control of the pandemic.
“At the end of the conference, we will issue a communiqué that will state our key observations concerning our successes and challenges with the COVID-19
response in various aspects and we will be proffering our expert opinion on what needs to be done, to be able to take us from where we are to where we
need to be, which is a complete and total control of the pandemic,” he said.
Nigeria, meanwhile, received 4 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from the United States, yesterday, as the country steps up efforts to battle
a third wave of infections.
The doses, which came on two planes, were received by officials from the UN children agency, UNICEF, on behalf of Nigeria at the airport in Abuja.
It was the second batch of vaccines to arrive in Africa’s most populous nation after 4 million doses were delivered in March under the COVAX scheme.
This came as the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the United States (US) Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that the Delta coronavirus
variant appears to cause more severe illness and spreads as easily as chickenpox.
They said vaccination is not enough by itself to stop the spread of variants and recommended combination with non-pharmacological interventions such as
isolation and quarantine, physical distancing, use of facemasks and hand hygiene.
President, NMA, Prof. Innocent Ujah, told The media , yesterday: “We need to be more careful because the Delta variant of is spreading so fast and can
be very deadly. The government and the citizens have their parts to play. While the government provides vaccines and other materials, the people should
wear their facemasks. We need to appropriately use facemasks and wash our hands. We have failed in social distancing. Vaccination alone cannot prevent
the spread of COVID-19.”
He said further: “Nigerian doctors will continue to show commitment. We will continue to treat patients. The essence is to interrupt transmission chain
if we are able to follow Non Pharmacological Procedures (NPP). We are very lucky that many more Nigerians are surviving the pandemic. We should not over
stretch our luck. We have had several seminars to discuss what is happening and how to support government.”
A CDC internal document outlined unpublished data that showed fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
“I think people need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here. This is serious,” she told CNN. “It’s one of the most transmissible viruses we know
about. Measles, chickenpox, this — they’re all up there.”
The CDC is scheduled to publish data that will back Walensky’s controversial decision to change guidance for fully vaccinated people. She said the CDC
was recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in places where transmission of the virus is sustained or high.
She said everyone in schools: students, staff and visitors should wear masks at all times. “The measures we need to get this under control are extreme,”
Walensky said.
She said the data in the report did not surprise her. “It was the synthesis of the data all in one place that was sobering,” she said.
The CDC presentation said the Delta variant is about as transmissible as chickenpox, with each infected person, on average, infecting eight or nine others.
The original lineage was about as transmissible as the common cold, with each infected person passing the virus to about two other people on average. That
infectivity is known as R0.
“When you think about diseases that have an R0 of eight or nine, there aren’t that many,” Walensky said. And if vaccinated people get infected anyway,
they have as much virus in their bodies as unvaccinated people. That means they’re as likely to infect someone else as unvaccinated people who get infected.
“The bottom line was that, in contrast to the other variants, vaccinated people, even if they didn’t get sick, got infected and shed virus at similar levels
as unvaccinated people who got infected,” Dr. Walter Orenstein, who heads the Emory Vaccine Center and who viewed the documents, told CNN.
But vaccinated people are safer, the document indicates.
“Vaccines prevent more than 90 per cent of severe disease, but may be less effective at preventing infection or transmission,” it read.
It said vaccines reduce the risk of severe disease or death 10-fold and reduce the risk of infection three-fold. The presentation also cites three reports
that indicate the Delta variant, originally known as B.1.617.2, might cause more severe disease.
Also, researchers have warned that vaccination alone won’t stop the rise of new variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their
protection.
They said people needed to wear masks and take other steps to prevent spread until almost everyone in a population has been vaccinated.
Their findings, published in Nature Scientific Reports, support an unpopular decision by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to advise even
fully vaccinated people to start wearing masks again in areas of sustained or high transmission.
“We found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain,” the team wrote.
