Science in Africa: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Nigerian virologist Oyewale Tomori assesses how African countries navigated the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this fourth episode, we speak again to Professor Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist, who is well known for his media commentary of the COVID-19 pandemic. He previously worked for the World Health Organization and now acts as government adviser on disease outbreaks.The epidemiology of COVID in Africa is different from what is happening in Europe and other parts. That’s number one. And I think we should have recognized that before we planned our response.

The movement of the COVID virus is from man to man, not from government office. And if I get the COVID and I don’t spread it to you, it dies within me. And therefore we don’t have epidemics going on. I think we should have stressed that the most, the more important player in the COVID epidemic was the human, the public, not the government.At the initial stage I mean, we know of lockdowns, palliative, and a number of countries becomes majorly corruption, and so on and so forth.

You know, like when we started the ACDC said, “We had to leave three, four laboratories that could diagnose COVID in Nigeria” These are some of the things about our planning that we need to look at. Did we really plan properly? How many laboratories do we need? Could we have done with fewer, and improve the access of the laboratories to the states? Those are things. You know, I mean, I think I hope we’re learning from what…. but unfortunately, many of the African countries, once the epidemic is over, we forget whatever lessons we learned. And then when your next one comes, we start all over again from scratch.

If we decentralize the control to the lowest level of local government, state level, then our national centres, African regional centres, will be in a position to assist, to coordinate. We look at where it’s coming from, this place, what planes they come by, who are the passengers. That was when the US CDC came in.

But then so at the end of that huge opportunity said, We did well, what about during that period of record, the number of children that got infected with polio, because you boycotted. So when we talk about doing well I think it is a relative term. That’s number one.

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