Thread by @fisayosoyombo

For four months, all samples submitted for testing by the Cross River State Govt returned -ve for COVID-19.

However, just last week, ALL five samples independently collected by UCTH and tested at an NCDC-approved lab returned +ve.
#fisayoscovid19series
1/18

To place this in proper context, it is not just that these five samples collected by the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) tested +ve, the owners of the samples had merely exhibited MILD COVID-19 symptoms.
2/18

Since the symptoms were mild, doctors were expecting only one or two to be +ve. Turned out all five were.

Meanwhile, majority of the samples collected and declared negative by the state had exhibited CLASSICAL symptoms of the virus.
3/18

Classical samples collected by the state yielded negative results but mild, independently-collected samples yielded +positive.

Cross River abracadabra!
4/18

Although NCDC data as of June 30 reveal that only eight samples from Cross River had been tested in the four-month period, I can confirm that 25 samples were collected from UCTH alone.
5/18

Someday, the Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Betta Edu, will have to explain to Nigerians what happened to the outstanding 17 samples.

Were they missing? Were they damaged? Were they deliberately not submitted? Why did they not get to the NCDC?
6/18

And this is assuming that apart from UCTH, no sample was collected anywhere else in the whole of Cross River.

In any case, this is not the biggest question Dr. Edu has to answer.
7/18

She had declared that the samples of Mr. Godwin Akwaji, the Cross River State House of Assembly member who died at the UCTH isolation centre on June 18, were negative. But there’s no record anywhere that his samples ever got to NCDC.

What happened to Akwaji’s samples?
8/18

And where did this negative result emanate from?

This wasn’t the only dubiously-announced negative result by the state (Meanwhile, at least 10 of the 20 suspected COVID-19 cases admitted at the hospital have died, even though all of their samples were declared -ve!).
9/18

The real damage is that whenever the health minister announced these negative results, most of which belonged to UCTH patients, the doctors attending to them often came out of their self-isolation and began mixing with their families and the rest of the society.
10/18

This information manipulation by the state has neutralized any genuine health effort to break the wider chain of COVID-19 transmission and infection.

The real truth is: COVID-19 has travelled faster in Cross River than the records show (and lots of doctors are exposed).
11/18

If in doubt, keep an eye on UCTH’s independent sample collection over the next few weeks.

In all this, I bring you good news. NCDC’s recent approval for UCTH to send samples independent of the state govt has been a master stroke.
12/18

It is the single biggest reason the lies can no longer continue undetected.

As of June 28, NCDC had sent viral transport medium kits directly to UCTH to enable them commence sample collection.

The following day, Monday 29th, UCTH sent five samples to Abakaliki.
13/18

They belonged to two patients at the isolation centre, two UCTH doctors complaining of respiratory distress & another patient billed for surgery. They went through all the validation processes; NCDC was involved.

On Thursday night, the UCTH management received the results
14/18

All five were positive but for four days, NCDC couldn’t announce them as part of its daily updates — because the Cross River State Government blatantly refused to generate a state epidemiology code number for the five samples.
15/18

Without those code numbers, NCDC couldn’t label those samples and include them in the report.

Well, all the shenanigans appear destined for the end.
16/18

The Federal Ministry of Health and the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 have sent a 17-man rapid response team to Calabar to align the state’s COVID-19 response with the national strategy.
17/18

If the team does its job well and is able to avoid the kind of trap that hooked the group that was dispatched to Kogi in early May, then we should be getting a truer picture of Cross River’s COVID-19 status pretty soon.
18/18