HAND SAFETY: SHOULD WE ALL WEAR GLOVES AGAINST COVID-19

Though the greatest site being attacked by Covid-19 is the lungs but the parts of the body to be more careful of are the hands (palms) and the nose (nostrils). An understanding of the meaning of risk helps us to understand which of the two parts to be given more protection. The hands pick up the virus more than the nose however the harm is less likely to occur at the hand compared to the nose - the real example of probability of hazard occurring and the likelihood of causing harm in the definition of risk.
Why should we given concern to our hand safety at this point? 1. The virus can survive for 4hours on copper, 24hours on cardboard, 2days on plastic and 3days on stainless steel. Meaning that the door handle you touch, the surface of table, the wall, the floor, the currency, the wrappings of snacks and food packages are more likely to be vector for the virus. A typical scenario of virus on every surfaces around us! Should we all wear gloves? The practical and workable answer is NO. You will only need gloves if you are a health care worker and such glove must be disposed properly and incinerated. To the rest of us, wearing a glove would increase the risk than solving the problem - everyone is expected to be trained before using any PPE because wrongly used PPE is more dangerous than no PPE. So what then is our defence: 1. Avoid handshake. 2. Have a pocket size hand sanitizer with you, sanitize your hands frequently. 3. Wash your hands as often as possible with soap and running water. 4. Disinfect surfaces regularly with Bleach, Izal, Dettol etc. Let us please treat this virus with more serious concern. It is a global pandemic, a very serious incidence in our lifetime. Do not compare it to Ebola, Lasser fever - they do not belong to the same category. So far over 200,000 deaths have been reported globally - after 6 months (Covid might stay for more 6months or 1years, either continously or at intervals). The death tolls and infection would have been worse if not for the extreme measures the global community have taken to curb it. Let us cooperate to stay alive and healthy against this virus. It would turn out to be the best managed global pandemic in the history of humanity and we should do our best to live to tell the story and not to be the story. Stay Safe.

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FIND OUT HOW NOSE MASK PROTECTS AGAINST COVID-19

The surgical nose mask is the most used PPE against the spread of Covid-19. How protective is the mask and how can we guarantee the safe use of this wear?
Covid-19 has an average size of 0.000006mm. Quite small! Bad news? The good news is that this tiny size organism cannot live and move by itself. It moves when attached to another substance. The most likely medium for the virus to travel is droppings from an infected person. It travels with droppings like sneeze, saliva etc. Sneeze dropping for instance has an average particle size of 3mm - a bit big now. So when we use surgical mask, we are guaranteed protection from saliva, sneezing droppings from transporting the virus to infect us. A surgical nose mask has a mesh size of 0.003mm. Please endeavour to use this PPE when you are likely to be in the midst of people. Also take note of the following points:

1. Use the mask aseptically, i.e. free from contamination. That means you must sanitize your hands frequently to avoid infecting the mask with your hands - when removing or replacing it on your nose.
2. Dispose off the mask after you have attended to patients in the hospital or when you have been in the midst of people.
3, For those who are not using the mask frequently and may want to reuse it (due to financial constraint): the mask should be handled in such a way that it doesn't get contaminated. Expose it to sunlight as UV radiation besides the heat (IR radiation) in the sun will sterile it for reuse.

Now this is the ethical reason you should use nose mask:
As we prepare to gradually return to our businesses in few days to come, I feel we should remind ourselves of the moral duty we owe one another - following Emmanuel Kant model and beyond. Testing kits will remain insufficient for a long time, so knowing ones Covid-19 status would still be unreached. Many patients are asymptomatic - I suspect most blacks will be, because of our environmental resilience (a case of malaria and others). This means that many that would have been infected won't show symptoms but can spread the virus. Assuming you carelessly contract the virus because you did not wear a nose cover, it would be understandable being that you were not safety conscious, at best you lacked voluntary compliance. But assuming you carelessly infect others because you didn't know you have the virus and you were not wearing a nose cover, then it would show you are unethical, wicked, and inhumane. Just think of it for a moment: you mistakenly contracted the virus, didn't know you have it, didn't wear mask, infected 50persons in your lifetime, 20 died because of you, but you get treated later and survived it to life till old age having this scenario played on your head all your life. Just think. We have a moral duty to protect our neighbours from ourselves. Rise to that responsibility today.

WHEN WHO SAYS ALCOHOL BASED SANITIZER

The outbreak of Covid-19 has turned most Nigerians to pharmacists and chemists - producing "hand sanitizer". This development has posed a serious risk to our society as these producers see it as an opportunity to make money the usual "Nigerian way".

What does WHO mean by alcohol? Alcohol (alkanol) is a big family that comprises of many members. The average Nigerian experimenting with production of hand sanitizer will be exposed to at least four types of alcohols.

Are all these effective for the purpose?

These alcohols are:

1. Ethanol ( going by our local names ogogoro, akaikai, ufofup): This is the most effective of all the alcohols that WHO recommend in antisepsis (sanitizing). Strangely, no one is using this because they do not want their product to look as if it is local. They do not want people to know their formulation. They want their sanitizer to appear foreign hence they avoid using ethanol which is far most effective.

2. Isopropanol (IPA): The next alcohol that is equivalent with ethanol in antisepsis (sanitizing) is IPA. Many producers at this time want a product that is formulated with IPA so as to make it look foreign and superior to those with local raw material. The challenge they however have is cost. A litre of IPA which was 1200naira three weeks ago now cost 1800naira. So this cost factor makes sanitizer makers to desire an alternate raw material, but not locally sourced.

3. Methanol: This is what a lot of sanitizer makers now use to cut cost. A litre of Methanol is only 800naira now. It appears almost same way as IPA but is not in the list of alcohols for antisepsis.

4. Glycerol: This is a tertiary class of alcohol which is in strict sense not a requirement for sanitizers but can be optionally used to serve as moisturizer. This will make the product to have nice feel.

All these Methanol based sanitizers people are parading about with is doing more harm than good. This is because someone who will naturally not shake hands will comfortably do that because he/she has sanitizer to use thereafter.

Please handwash with soap in running tap is still the best bet. Employ social distancing. Use sanitizer from only trusted producers.

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Latest News on Covid 19

President Muhammadu Buhari will address Nigerians by 7pm on Monday.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, announced this in a statement hours before President Buhari is scheduled to address Nigerians.

“Television, radio and other electronic media outlets are enjoined to hook up to the network services of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) respectively for the broadcast,” he said.

The President is expected to address Nigerians on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as some residents in Lagos, Ogun, and the Federal Capital Territory expect to know whether the lockdown would be extended or not.

More than a million positive cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed with thousands of deaths recorded in many countries across the world.

As of April 12, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said a total of  323 cases have been confirmed with 10 deaths in the country

It noted that 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have recorded at least one confirmed case of coronavirus while a total of 85 people have been discharged.

On March 29, President Muhammadu Buhari declared a lockdown in Lagos and Ogun States, as well as Abuja, as part of measures to curtail the spread of the disease and ease the stress of identifying contacts with confirmed cases.

In his last broadcast, President Buhari said the movement restriction would last for an initial period of 14 days effective from 11pm on March 30.

Ebrimson, who spoke on Monday during an interview on Sunrise Daily, explained, “I think we are dealing with the issue of apprehension. Earlier this month, there was a cult supremacy battle in Ifo and the police rose to the challenge and got some of them arrested.”

“Thereafter, this snowballed to Agbado, Ijoko, Ota area and we put up a team to go after the cultists and ever since then, we have been making arrests.

“People have been calling me, there is no day I don’t receive close to 100 calls. Most of these calls are false alarms. The social media is dishing out fear,” he added.

He explained that the decision was taken based on the advice of the Federal Ministry of Health and the NCDC.

The President then advised residents of the affected places to postpone travels while all businesses and offices there should be fully closed during the period of the lockdown.

Ahead of the day which the lockdown is expected to end – April 13, some residents in Lagos and Ogun State have raised alarm about unrest in their communities.

PTF Coordinator Says COVID-19 ‘Will Go Away’, Keeps Mum On Lockdown Extension

Akinola Ajibola  

Forwarded by E.E.Jerry
Updated April 13, 2020

The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr Sani Aliyu, has urged Nigerians to continue to show understanding with the Federal Government in the period of the coronavirus pandemic.

He noted that adequate measures were already in place to curb the spread of the disease, stressing that it was only a matter of time before COVID-19 wipes out.

Dr Aliyu made the remarks while giving an update on the activities of the task force during his appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

“It (COVID-19) will go away; it’s only a matter of time but what we don’t want is for COVID-19 to carry away a lot of our people and that wouldn’t be the right thing,” he said on the political programme.

The national coordinator added, “We will continue to push, we will continue to work, to try and keep this pandemic down but certainly, if people can observe those simple measures that we have advised, it will go a very long way towards making sure that the public remains healthy until this pandemic dies out because COVID-19 will go away.”

More than a million positive cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed with thousands of deaths recorded in many countries across the world.

In Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said a total of 323 cases have been confirmed with 10 deaths as of April 12.

It added that 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have recorded at least one confirmed case of coronavirus while a total of 85 people have been discharged.

As part of measures to curtail the spread of the disease and ease the stress of identifying contacts with confirmed cases, President Muhammadu Buhari declare Lagos,Abuja and Ogun lockdown. The President, in a broadcast on March 29, stated that the movement restriction which would last for an initial period of 14 days would take effect from 11pm on March 30.

Ahead of the date which the lockdown is expected to end – April 13, some residents in the affected areas have raised security concerns.

Asked whether there was any indication that President Buhari would extend the lockdown, Dr Ahmed insisted that the task force has submitted its recommendation and the decision to extend would only be taken by the President.

The national coordinator, who frowned on the action of some state governments to relax restriction protocols recently, stressed that a majority of the infections were not linked to travels abroad or linked clearly to positive cases.

He said, “In other words, community transmission, I believe, is already happening and we need to pick up those that are positive so that we can isolate them very quickly and make sure that transmission stops.

“So far, we have done well over 3,000 tests. For a population like Nigeria, that’s not really high.”

According to Dr Aliyu, one of the problems is that the government is not getting a lot of demand from certain parts of the country, especially in the North.

“We know there are challenges in terms of getting the test done. People have complained about the difficulty in accessing our telephone services and we are certainly working with NCC and others to increase the telephone channels,” he added.

God help the world.