Thread by @fisayosoyombo

In two months of running this series, Cross River is the 1st state where a sample was declared -ve and experts, shell-shocked, wondered: “How? That’s got to be +ve!”

This is due to questions about the speed, timing, storage & submission of samples.
#fisayoscovid19series

1/15

As you may already know, Mrs M. T. O., a nurse working at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), died of SUSPECTED COVID-19 symptoms last week.

Although ill, the nurse had been very stable and was being managed for what looked like malaria.
2/15

Then all of a sudden, 48 hours before her death, she developed very acute, rapid respiratory tract symptoms such as cough, fever and difficulty in breathing.

She was sent to the hospital’s isolation centre and her samples were collected on Wednesday.
3/15

By the time the result returned –ve on Thursday, she had died.

Many who saw the late nurse’s chest x-ray are convinced it was a “classical COVID-19 x-ray”.
4/15

It wasn’t really a case of COVID-19 “suspicion” but of such “conviction” that medical experts within and outside Cross River said if a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test was done and it turned out negative, then it must be repeated!
5/15

It’s not just that the strength of the sensitivity of that x-ray was so high; this wasn’t the 1st such occurrence. Of the eight samples tested in Cross River so far, three have had x-rays of this nature.

And these were a special breed of x-rays that weren’t seen until now.
6/15

The sudden appearance of these unique x-rays shows there’s something amiss.

Those who've followed this series for a while will recall my 10-tweet thread of May 1 on the peculiar chest x-rays that proved the strange deaths being covered up in Kano were COVID-19-related.
7/15

The authorities would later confirm these deaths as caused by COVID-19.

Back to Cross River, lots of questions need to be answered if the Ben Ayade government must convince us all that the state is indeed COVID-19-free:
8/15

1. Seven of the 8 samples collected so far are from the UCTH.

What about other hospitals in Calabar & the rest of the 18 LGAs of the state?

Does it mean that in a state of 4million people, not more than 1 person met the COVID-19 case definition outside UCTH in 3 months?
9/15

2. Why does it ALWAYS take the Cross River State epidemiologist so long to turn up when informed of the need for sample collection for a possible Coronavirus case?

Half of the samples were collected post-mortem because of delayed response. Why is this delay a pattern?
10/15

3. Why is there, similarly, a pattern of delayed sample submission?

There is no sample that was collected in Cross River and sent for testing within 24 hours. Not one.

All the samples spent the night in Calabar; all stayed a minimum of 24 hours in the state. Why?
11/15

The Abakaliki lab, where the last sample was sent to, is only three hours away. Even a sample collected at 1pm should get there that same day.

4. Nobody knows anything about the storage of collected samples or what exactly is being sent or the viability of the samples.
12/15

Why is sample collection and submission for testing shrouded in such first-class secrecy?

5. Why is there an increase in deaths from COVID-19-like symptoms? It doesn’t matter that they’re in aliquots, unlike what was witnessed in Kano.
13/15

If COVID-19-like deaths are occurring but they’re not confirmed to be COVID-induced, then what’s the cause of the deaths?

6. Why are there very classical COVID-19-like chest x-rays, even if the results are coming back negative?
14/15

These images are quite novel, so if they aren’t from COVID-19, what’re they from?

Until these questions have all been answered by the state govt, that claim of zero COVID-19 case in Cross River will receive little acclaim beyond the State House & the camps of Ayade’s loyalists.