By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
Coronavirus requires wearing a face mask in public places to keep others safe. But they are hardly used in Nigeria, especially among young people who feel immune from the virus.
The virus can’t survive Nigeria’s hot climate, some of them would argue, including on social media where tons of tweets exist about the claim.
Early claims about so called COVID-19’s weakness in Nigeria due to hot climate started emerging around the first week of March 2020, shortly after the country recorded its first case.
The claims
One tweet from a verified twitter handle, @cstross, with more than 48,000 followers, argued: “COVID-19 doesn’t do well in temperatures over 26 celsius. Nigeria is pretty well set (except for heavily air-conditioned locations!) but Scotland’s going to get hammered (it virtually never reaches 26 degrees here).”
Another tweet from @ezidinmaodigwe, on March 2, 2020, even claimed that Nigeria’s heat is divine intervention against the coronavirus.
“People complaining of the hot weather in Nigeria should know it is God’s method of chasing COVID-19 out of Nigeria. #Nigeria is blessed,” he says.
The claims have encouraged ordinary Nigerians in the 200 million population, most of whom are not affected by COVID-19, to gloat that the virus targets mainly the affluent, according to a BBC report.
The ‘selectiveness’ of the virus was God’s divine justice against the corrupt elite for Nigeria to become a better country, they told the BBC.
Hot or cold weather?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said COVID-19 is not heat-resistant and won’t be killed by sun temperature of 26-27 degrees, the average in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub.
The U.S. State of Texas, which can be hot or cold, depending on the season, has high number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Although during winter, it could be intensely cold, colder than anything experienced in Nigeria, COVID-19 cases and deaths have reportedly soared even during hot conditions.
The state has recorded 172 deaths from COVID-19 in every 100,000 population, according to data obtained from Texas Department of Health Services.
California, with fluctuations of heat and cold temperature, has a COVID-19 death rate of 157 in 100,000 inhabitants, data from covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard, shows.
Mexico, also cold and hot, depending on the parts of the country, also has 176 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population, according to data obtained from the World Health Organisation.
Nigeria has recorded lower deaths compared to other climes. This, has, tended to bolster citizen’s claim that they are immune against COVID-19. For instance, Nigeria has only one death in 100,000 inhabitants.
Nigeria’s infectious rate is 82 persons in every 100,000 inhabitants. This is far insignificant compared to 10,000 Texans in every 100,000 population that have been diagnosed with the virus.
Comparing researches
Research led by the University of Texas in Austin, and published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on October 26, 2020, found that weather does not play a significant role in the transmission rate of COVID-19. Rather, mobility, homestay, population and urban density were the major factors contributing to COVID-19 spread.
Another research led by scientists at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, and the University of California, Irvine, published in the Hindawi Scientifica journal on August 21, 2020, found no significant association between temperature and COVID-19 transmission or mortality in Lagos. Other scientists have found that higher temperature and higher relative humidity potentially suppress the transmission of COVID-19, but does not kill it.
Diagnosing the issue
If hot weather plays no such significant role in the spread of COVID-19, why then does Nigeria have low reported cases and mortality?
Many factors may combine to answer this question. The first being the low number of COVID-19 tests so far carried out in Nigeria, which may not reveal the true extent of the spread.
Less than one percent of Nigeria’s population as at April 30, 2021 have been tested for COVID-19. In other climes, the test rate is high. For example, nine out of every ten Texans have been tested for COVID-19.
The other possible reason why Nigerians may not have recorded high mortality as a result of the COVID-19 may well be connected to the age demography of the population. Less than five percent of Nigeria’s population is 60-years and above, which is the category more at risk of the virus.
The U.S. State of Texas has almost 20 per cent of its population above 60 years. For California, its 60+ demography is 18.3 per cent of the population. Mexicans above 60 years are more than 10 per cent of the country’s population.
The question, therefore, arises whether the older folks in Nigeria may have been dying since COVID-19 outbreak than at any time? This problem becomes difficult to resolve since deaths in many parts of Nigeria are not recorded or reported unless it affects very important persons.
Deaths in Kano
Between April 25 and May 7, 2020, Kano State recorded deaths of seven professors, according to PREMIUM TIMES, an online newspaper. The newspaper also reported other deaths of dozens of high-profile people from the state within the period, most of whom were older citizens.
Another newspaper, the Daily Trust, in a report on April 21, 2020, said 150 people were buried in three Kano cemeteries.
The Kano State government had claimed the deaths were not COVID-19 related even when no autopsy was carried out to determine the cause of deaths. But Nigeria’s Health Minister, Osagie Ehanire, said after investigation, relying on ‘verbal autopsies,’ that at least 50 percent of the deaths were COVID-19 related.
A Kano based journalist, Abbas Yushau, who works for the Nigerian Tracker, an online newspaper, said the deaths mainly occurred in the metropolis, especially Fagge, an area known for its congestion.
He said a gravedigger at a cemetery in Kofar Mazugal, also densely populated, told him they bury an average of 20 older people every day in April 2020. He said before the pandemic, the cemetery recorded an average of three burials per day.
The extent of Nigeria’s COVID-19 deaths may never be known. The absence of reliable data collection on death rate makes it difficult.
This publication was produced as part of IWPR’s Africa Resilience Network (ARN) programme, administered in partnership with the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and Africa Uncensored. For more information, on ARN, please visit the ARN site: https://africaresiliencenetwork.com/