Anambra’s COVID-19 Index Case, All You Need To Know 

In a special Media Briefing held yesterday, Monday, 13th April 2020, the Anambra State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Vincent Ugochukwu Okpala gives a factual account of Anambra’s COVID-19 Index Case, how it was detected and how the state has managed the situation so far. 

In respect of preparedness of the State against the spread of Corona Virus, he pointed that the COVID-19 Action Team which His Excellency, Governor Willie Mmaduaburochukwu Obiano chairs, has done a lot to make sure the virus did not get into the state up until last Friday. “We did a lot of work in infection prevention and control, surveillance, awareness campaign and we have been successful,” he said.

Gov. Obiano went an extra step to start putting in place strategies that will help in disease containment. These strategies were; the lockdown that we experienced, the school closures, the moves made by leaders of religious organizations, the advisory that discouraged handshaking and other forms of contact salutation.

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All those things that were put in place were to make sure that the virus doesn’t come into Anambra State and to add to that the state went further to get ready for case management in case we have the bug come into the state and established Protective Care Centers, not Isolation Centers.

The center at Mbaukwu/Umuawulu has 240 beds with the capacity to go up to 1000 beds, Onitsha that has 58 beds with a world-class ICU. There are also centers at Ekwulobia, Umueri, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, and Amaku.

Last week Friday, NCDC sent a report of an index case in Anambra State around 7-8 pm‬ and the COVID-19 action team swung into action to identify the case. He also stated that the government  knew where that case was as at the time of the announcement

“I personally spoke with the doctors that were on call, usually when a sample is taken from a patient by us and taken to the test center, we follow up the case up until the result comes out. So we followed this particular case, I called to find out how the patient was doing even before the result came out.

I spoke to the doctor that was supposed to be on call in this facility and I was surprised when he said that he didn’t know much about the patient. Usually, there should be a hand out because when you sign out there should be a hand out to the next physician coming in.

So I wasn’t happy with the response I got but I took the name of the doctor he said that knew much about this case and he was not in the facility, so I called him until I found out that the patient had actually escaped from the facility and this doctor on duty did not know that the patient was not in the facility at that point in time”

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He continued “So we started making calls and communicated with his Excellency. Our goal at that point was to find out where the patient was. I spoke with the management of the hospital and there was no help coming from anybody.

So we had to employ every available means to identify where this individual was at that point in time and it took us up ‪until 3.21 am‬ in the morning. I was knocking at doors, entering facilities until with the aid of technology we were finally able to find out where he was”.

anaedoonline.com gathered that the index case is in one of the state’s protective Care Centers with over 50 master trainers, health care personnel trained to take care of COVID-19 patients. The state is in partnership with the WHO and the EU, the facilities have ventilators, cardiac monitors, EKD machines, Central oxygen, and other medical facilities.

The commissioner said the patient is in good hands and they have been in constant communication up till yesterday night where the commissioner was with the patient for 2hours.

He pointed out that His Excellency wants all patients to be taken care of in the most humane way and that is why they chose to call the facilities Protective Care Centers, opposed to the medically recommended name “Isolation Centers” to avoid stigmatization. As part of that humane treatment, the patient was left with his telephone and have access to his family and friends so he could feel comfortable.

On the issue of contact tracing, the commissioner said they have traced 29 potential contacts and these contacts are from the facilities that the patient visited, family and friends, business associates, etc.

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Speaking on testing centers Dr. Vincent Okpala said, “When it comes to testing, when we get a call for a test to be conducted as a result of symptoms or we have a health care provider call in on behalf of a person that wants to be tested, you call the Anambra State Public Health emergency operation center numbers that have been made available and not NCDC.

If you call NCDC they will still refer you to us, we get an average of 150 calls per day. When we get that call we engage you and ask a few questions. We have a case description guideline. We didn’t develop that, NCDC and WHO did but every country has now designed theirs to fit their system”.

He continued, “We go through case description, for someone showing symptoms, there are a set of questions … Have you been exposed to someone that has been diagnosed for COVID-19, not a suspected case or are you coming from a place that has wide transmission?

The team goes there, interacts with the individual. If he meets what we term ‘case definition’ then we take samples of such individuals to a test center. But if they don’t meet the case definition, we explain to them they didn’t meet the case definition.

The reason is this; we don’t test at will, if we collect those samples and take them to a test center, that center could be at Irua in Edo State, it could be in Ebonyi State. If we fill out the form they will still ask more questions to ensure the case meets “case description.” So that’s why at our level we do a lot of ‘checking’ to ensure we are not going on a wild goose chase”.

When a test is run, results are gathered between 24-48 hours regardless of the location of the test. Dr. Okpala highlighted that “Once we hand over that sample to the test center we lose control.”

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If the result comes out negative, NCDC  sends the form and ticket to the negative section. If it comes out Positive they announce it themselves, we don’t control if they will announce it or not and that is why things are centrally coordinated. We have been working hard to get a test center in Anambra State.

It will save us the 6hrs going and coming from Irua. The NCDC regulates the establishment of test centers and we have gone far with them but I want Ndi-Anambra to know that right now, we don’t have a problem with testing. Anybody that qualifies to be tested has been tested and will be tested and as at that index case we had 13 tests that returned Negative the 14th case was the one that returned Positive.

The new testing method that will come into the state is the use of the Gene Machine to do tests. This is a machine used for tuberculosis patients with about 10 testing centers for that. The manufacturers of these machines have developed a cartridge that could also aid in testing for COVID-19 and the result comes out in 15 Minutes.

Anaedoonline gathered that Anambra state government is in contact with them and have placed an order for it like 3 or 4weeks ago and are supposed to get it in the next one week, however, they came back saying that America and UK have to be satisfied before they can start shipping to other places. They further promised to get it down by the ending of April and the beginning of May.

To Ndi-Anambra, he said that It is the people that move the virus. So, if we stay still, the virus stays still and dies but if we move, we move the virus. Now that there is an index case, it has become paramount that moving about should stop. We need to observe all the measures put in place and stop moving the bug around. If we do that we will win this battle.

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