Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has revealed the reason behind the dance videos of COVID-19 patients in various isolation centres across the nation.
Following the viral dance videos of some Nigeria COVID-19 patients, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, NCDC DG appeared on Thursday’s edition of Channels TV Sunrise daily to make some clarifications regarding the novel virus.
He clarified the major misconception that COVID-19 patients seen dancing in online videos are not ill. He said a viral video of a dancing Coronavirus patient does not represent the experience of other patients
According to Dr. Ihekweazu, an infectious disease such as Coronavirus does not weaken a patient physically unlike other diseases.
He also noted the patients are placed in isolation centres in order not to transmit the virus to other persons.
“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.
Regarding the dance videos, the NCDC Boss said staying in isolation for three to four weeks may be difficult. Hence, the reason patients devised a means of amusement to adapt to their surroundings.
“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.”
Nigeria as at 11:30am May 21 has recorded 6677 COVID-19 cases, 1840 recoveries and 200 deaths.