Specialist medical microbiologist and immunologist, Dr Abiodun Osiyemi, discusses coronavirus, lockdown and other issues with SIMON UTEBOR
as a medical microbiologist, what do you think about COVID-19?
COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly-discovered coronavirus. In other words, it is a newly-discovered coronavirus in 2019. People who are falling ill after having COVID-19 will actually display three types of presentations.
Some just have mild symptoms and recover without special treatment; some have moderate symptoms and may require moderate treatment or admission and the other group has what is called severe symptoms and they usually will be treated in an intensive care unit or critical care unit and they may usually die as a result of the severity.
What do you think about how contagious it is?
COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through droplets. So, when an infected person coughs, sneezes, exhales, you have droplets that are heavy, they drop in the air; some quickly fall to the ground – the ones not very heavy. Therefore, you can be infected when you breathe in the virus if you are in close proximity to someone who has the COVID-19, touches contaminated surfaces, and it gets to your eyes, mouth and nose, etc. That is the general information we need to understand.
Who is at risk?
People of all ages can be infected. Older people with pre-existing conditions such as asthma, diabetes and heart diseases appear to be more vulnerable or anyone that generally has existing illnesses. Therefore, what has been recommended by the WHO and other people is for people to take prevention – first, hand-washing for 25 to 30 seconds; second, social distancing of two metres; third, you can also put on a face mask which prevents these droplets from entering the body and also during this lockdown, you should stay at home because it is human beings that spread this disease.
How does someone know they have been infected?
Most common symptoms are often fever, cough, shortness of breath, breathing with difficulty and sometimes infection of the lungs. It is usually less than 14 days. The question is how can it be treated? There is no specific treatment for the disease. However, many symptoms can be treated and so the first rule is for the patient to be treated based on the clinical presentations. People have often used different kinds of treatments because there is no standard or internationally agreed treatment.
You have advised that there should be a complete lockdown for about two weeks. Already, the lockdown in the country has lasted for about a month. Do you think Nigerians have the capacity to survive another extension?
As we speak, we have had about 2.7 million cases, 0.19 million deaths and 0.73 million recoveries globally. We have not had a complete lockdown. We have had lockdowns in Lagos and Ogun states as well as the FCT. We have not had a total lockdown. We have seen in Italy and the UK how they have had complete lockdown but we have not had that.
We have had a rising wave of crimes occasioned by the lockdown. Don’t you think there are other ways to go about this apart from a total lockdown?
The only way that COVID-19 spread is through human movement and human contamination. Therefore, the only way to prevent this spread is by limiting human movement close to 100 per cent. Why I said close to 100 per cent is because people will still have to go out to hospital for emergency, to markets to get foodstuffs and other necessaries, short of that, people will need to stay at home. There is no other way to go about it but for us to stay at home because the more people move around, the more they spread the infection.
Some persons have said natural medicine can cure the virus, what is your position on that?
It is agreed that there are three types of presentations: people with very mild symptoms that may not need any specific treatment. There is nothing much to administer since it is not specific. If you have specific symptoms such as fever and body ache, paracetamol can be given to treat those symptoms. And if it is a severe case such that the person cannot breathe well, then you have to give critical care.
I cannot tell you now that someone who has severe or critical presentation should use ginger. It is not even possible for the person to take ginger. There are people who have COVID-19 and don’t even know; they don’t even show any symptoms. They can take some things, it doesn’t matter. They are not symptomatic. The truth in the treatment for the disease is one: health care workers are not fully in a position to treat because there are no agreed protocols yet. We are still learning about the disease.
However, over time, people will learn how to treat the different kinds of presentations of the symptoms. If people have something like malaria, enteric fever, typhoid, etc., they know what to take and how to treat it. Or even for the other flu, there are vaccines. There are vaccines for the other coronavirus flu, but we don’t have vaccines for the COVID-19. There are no vaccines, there are different kinds of protocol and the health care practitioners are still learning. As regard the use of natural things like ginger, garlic, and others, I will say that even people with mild disease, if they don’t take anything, they may be fine. I don’t know how those things can be applied in severe cases.
As a microbiologist, what is your position on the argument that coronavirus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan and not a wet market?
Again, there are lots of conspiracy theories. What I can tell you as a specialist in medical microbiology and expert, is that this coronavirus has demonstrated what is called an atypical or non-typical characteristic to a strange characteristic. So, there are already three types of the new type: Types A, B and C, which are found in different regions and they also demonstrate different kinds of symptoms. That is all I can say about it but I cannot argue in terms of the origin because there is no clear evidence.
I can tell you that it is not the typical type from coronavirus and it is having different mutants. It is showing mild to complex or severe symptoms, but I cannot tell you if it was created in a laboratory or not. I can tell you its microbiological characteristics.
What are the microbiological characteristics?
I have said it. We don’t have a single coronavirus causing a typical kind of pattern just like if you say malaria – malaria has a typical kind of fever, catarrh, every other A+1, and high temperature. You give anti-malarial drugs, it goes away. That is a typical pattern. But for this one, you don’t have a typical pattern; you have three typical patterns which are mild infection that the patient can carry on with without coming down, moderate that may require admission and severe that may need critical care.
Between temperate and tropical countries, where is the COVID-19 more severe?
Like the normal coronavirus disease that we have, during the period of low temperature, it is more common than during the period of high temperature. But again, we have not had a 12-month calendar period. In Europe, you have seen it during the cold temperature from November to about March; we are in April now. So, we can now say that we will observe it over another season with different temperature there.
But in Nigeria, during the time we have high temperature, we have seen there is little spread. Our temperature will drop during the rainy season. Normally, I will expect the typical coronavirus to increase when temperature is lower; that is for the typical coronavirus. But I can tell you this one is not showing a typical family behaviour.
I will advise that since our temperature will drop a little, may be it will increase, but we don’t know because we have not done massive screening. I think in Nigeria, during the wet season, as temperature drops, it may be higher. As I said, all these are postulations because this virus has not shown a typical pattern.
Are you impressed with the way the government has handled the coronavirus outbreak so far?
I can say the government is trying and the government needs to do more. The government is trying because we can see the initiative, you can see the mobilisation, the centres, etc. But in terms of health care workers, they are grossly inadequate; personal protective equipment is inadequate, centres for containment are inadequate, and budget available is inadequate because they were not budgeted for. This is a pandemic; we never passed this road before.
My opinion about government is that they are trying by setting up a national centre, by mobilising states, and giving directive that there should be a lockdown because this a road nobody had been through before. There is no treatment or vaccine, so it is a challenge.
There is room for more to be done. You can see that the government has come out with preventive measure guidelines; they have also activated lockdown in some states, so I can only commend the government and say that they can do more.
Some countries like the US, Italy, and Spain are struggling with many cases, what should Nigerians do to prevent it from getting to that level?
The only thing the other countries have done is to have total lockdown of their country. So we need to have a total lockdown because it is the movement of human beings that allows it to spread. After a total lockdown, we should now do what is called restricted movement and gathering for maybe another two weeks. From there people can move around, use face masks and adhere to social distancing and other preventive measures.
Some persons have argued that coronavirus is triggered by 5G technology, what is the nexus between 5G and coronavirus?
That is the easiest answer. It is what is called a hoax. In other words, 5G is not a new technology and coronavirus is new one; second, the scammer, who started talking about the danger and hazard of the 5G technology, was not basing it on any science. Do you recall the time when they said a certain brand of sanitary pad was causing HIV, there was no proof? There was also a time when they said a certain brand of noodles was causing death, there was no proof. I am saying that there is an unending conspiracy theory and they will remain so. Conspiracy theory is different from science.