Govt lying about number of patients –Nurse

TRACKING____…says ‘no sanitizers, face masks at Irrua hospital’

An official of Irrua Specialist Hospital yesterday claimed that the number of patients being treated for coronavirus was more than one which Edo State announced.

She said the record was being kept secret in order not to heighten panic already spreading across the country.

According to Federal Government’s statistics, as at yesterday, 51 cases were recorded with two people discharged and one death.

The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said that as at 11:25p.m. on Wednesday, the cases had increased to 51.

“Five new cases of #COVID19 have been confirmed in Nigeria: Two in the Federal Capital Territory, two in Lagos and one in Rivers State. Three are returning travellers into Nigeria and two are close contacts of a confirmed case,” NCDC said on its Twitter handle.

The centre had on Tuesday said there were 44 cases of COVID-19 in the country. Giving a breakdown of the 44 cases, it said there were eight in Abuja, one in Bauchi State, one in Edo State, one in Ekiti State, 29 in Lagos State and three in Ogun State.

However, in a telephone conversation with a male inquirer, the female health worker, who identified herself as a nurse at the Irrua medical facility, said information about other patients who had tested positive was being concealed by the hospital management and staff as directed by the Federal Government and Edo State government in order not to cause more panic.

According to the nurse, in an audio that is gradually going viral, the first female patient that was brought into the hospital infected some people while initially being treated in an open ward for pneumonia before her test turned out positive and was subsequently moved to the appropriate place for observation.

The nurse, who was asked if there was actually a case of coronavirus at the hospital, said: “When you say a case, ‘a’ means singular, the right word is there are cases but for it not to cause panic, the media has to put ‘a.’ By the time you say we have 10 people everybody will now be panicking. Even health workers will run away.

“Even as I am talking to you, people are applying for leave, they want to go home. As I am talking to you, we don’t have hand sanitizers, thank God for the raining season. We don’t have water to wash our hands. Our borehole has been bad. We don’t have protective gadgets, ordinary face masks, yesterday that I worked from morning till 2a.m., that I handed over, one face mask was not in our unit.”

Asked if the Federal Government had not been funding the facility, she said the information available was that Nigeria as indebted.

She added: “They said workers should stay at home but they said health workers are not inclusive. Since they don’t want health workers to stay at home, why don’t they provide things for us to work with?

“Our hazard allowance is just N5,000 that will not be enough to buy anti-malaria, not to talk of taking care of yourself.

“There is a case of someone who had contact with somebody who has it in Ondo State. She came to visit her boyfriend in AAU (Ambrose Ali University) in Ekpoma here. They just admitted her and thinking it was just pneumonia. After two to three days, the symptoms she was exhibiting were not that of ordinary pneumonia. They have to quarantine her, and at the end of the day she came out to be positive.

“All the patients in that ward, automatically, they are infected. Wherever she has gone to in Ekpoma now, all the people she met were not quarantined.”

The nurse said all the patients so far tested had been confined to the Lassa fever unit of the hospital.

She added: “We have been having cases but as a worker there, you cannot say it out. They will say you are going against the ethics. It is what they give to the media they will report. It’s only one case; that is what everybody has been hearing.”

She specifically bemoaned the lack of face mask, saying she could manage without hand gloves since she could always clean her hands with methylated spirit besides washing with soap and water.

“If you don’t wear face mask and you are taking temperature, the patient breathes directly into your face. You can’t be attending to a patient and you will be throwing your face away.

“These days I prefer they give me other work to do. I isolate myself by staying in one corner, and they keep asking me if I came to do the work,” she noted.

She also alluded to the scarcity of hand sanitizers even as far as to Onitsha, saying the pharmacy unit at the hospital was putting heads together to produce some to be distributed and for use locally at the hospital.