 You're welcome back to the breakfast on PLOS TV Africa. It's now time for our final conversation and we're talking COVID-19. We've invited Dr. Ollada Poashniobi and Epidemologist. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Good morning. So yesterday the federal government announced that there were going to be new COVID rules. First of all occur a few from 12 a.m. to 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. Also there's going to be you know shut down of bars, recreation centers, gyms all the fun places you love to go would unfortunately be shut down. You know they also say capacity you know would be reduced to 50% for crowds you know in places like churches. You know and Dr. Ollada Poashniobi we know that Nigerians seem to have or Nigerians seem to have this impression that you know COVID-19 is no more in the country no one wears or had people hardly wear face masks you know all these COVID restrictions that we had seem to have been relaxed you know but how do you think Nigerians might now take this this new COVID restrictions and also how you think it might also affect businesses especially those that you know are working the night like bars night clubs and all these other nightlife businesses in the country. Well unfortunately it's a bit up here to swallow for businesses if you have any sort of restriction to movement and communication physically then of course their sales are going to dip and people are going to be affected I mean people work there that is those who work there then there is a chain a supply chain those who sell drinks those who sell wood those sell wood provide other social services to them will also be affected to change and government is not unmindful like that however it's a situation is like a choice between two evils which one is lighter we say the devil and the deep blue sea so what we are going towards is the deep blue sea because you cannot you can never win a battle with the devil we have a chance if we go to the deep blue sea so this restriction because COVID does not move around let Nigerians remember that it is people who move around who have COVID that spread it around so if you reduce social interaction which is all what this is you see it's just one thing social interaction reduction the rates however for different industries it means different things so that has one two in reducing the chances of COVID being spread for one person but also involves using our face masks so that because the way it spreads is through our saliva our bread so if you cover your face with a mask you will catch almost everything within the mask and so the risk of you spreading to somebody else is with you the third thing is hand washing or hand hygiene hand hygiene has been shown to reduce infection even before COVID by over 60% without you doing any other thing so if we go back to those things all right we have a fighting chance all right doctor i want to ask about something that has confused a lot of Nigerians you know when people saw the story that said oh you know phase four of the lockdown a lot of Nigerians were asking when did we get to phase two and phase three that's one and then second is it seemed like Nigeria had started to you know be in a better place with regards our COVID figures um infection rate had dropped you know from 2000 and above to about 56 and 57 and and you know low figures so um tell us about that does it mean that those infection rates seem you know are getting higher or we are just doing this to prevent it from going higher yeah your last statement just says it all one we're doing this to prevent it going higher true that it was look wasn't a true reflection of our infection rate because people did not see people dying on the streets like Ebola it made us feel over confident that there is no more COVID let Nigerians remember that out of every 10 people that are living in the country the infection rate of COVID is between 10 or 15 percent so if you have 100 people in the country because of the way COVID we look about maximum of 15 people will get COVID now of those 15 will get COVID just about one to two percent may die so less than one if it is a thousand we'll be having 150 people this is assuming all the 1000 people take a test that's the first thing but in Nigeria not everybody are taking a test we have less than 200 000 samples taking and that's not equal to 200 000 people meanwhile we have 200 million population so if we go by epidemiological behavior of COVID that affects less than 10 percent that means like 20 million Nigerians who have COVID but most of them will not know now if 20 million people have COVID and they have not tested you will not know 20 million people have COVID now of the 20 million about one to two percent would have died knowingly or knowingly and most of them that COVID affects are elderly and people with pre-existing health conditions who normally in an environment if they die we say is either of old age or the person died of brief illness so one percent of 200 million is two million so doctor 20 million 200 000 so that's the magnitude of what we have not discovered because we have not done enough tests so doctor really yes doctor the figures are scary and they're even uncertain in this part of the world but when we look at the aim which is to reduce social interaction and the government says people can move from 4 a.m once it's 4 a.m in the morning you can move around till 12 midnight and I guess we had earlier asked the question there's a government trying to say COVID only you know moves around at night you know on a very lighter note he said that but we're asking what really would be more effective in curbing social interaction is it this 12 midnight to 4 a.m curfew or a total lockdown of the country when you are making decisions even on health or anything in your life there's a social and economic implication COVID moves everything but by human behavior most people don't move around at night you understand that so if naturally without any restriction most people don't move around at night you just want to ensure that those who move around at night you will lose their number again do you get my point so the second thing is if you lock the whole country down those who live on daily subsistence who are extremely poor don't forget about that about 40 percent Nigerians are extremely poor they live on less than 700 naira a day if you do a total lockdown then you have just signed a death warrant without pointing a gun 40 percent of Nigerians they are talking about 19 million people so during the day they are trying to say well let them live let them make a living but let them keep to health advisory so that their living does not constitute the danger to their life so so what about night you know what we're trying to do is make sense of the nighttime restrictions that's what i said i said naturally without any restriction on where you live on your streets if we take like a small like a small survey i'm not sure out of every hundred households 30 people will be going out at night so the point so the point to doctor then is how effective is this curfew you know in curbing the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria any restriction that reduces social interaction will reduce the rate of spread all right don't forget some countries are going to throw down fourth way uh india's case might likely be to the very two large hindu festival they had that they had a gathering of over a million to two million in each and you know people who come from different areas and then disperse again to different areas all right imagine us having such a thing especially trying to pre-empt gatherings at this time quickly share your thoughts with us on vaccination and all right you know how that may have helped but you know this is where we are for now that would not help much for now because the numbers are not significant enough to provide the immunity we want however if we help those that have been vaccinated from being severely ill the total vaccine that Nigeria got was just about four million now and that vaccine allows you must have two doses so the maximum we can do with those vaccines is just under two million with a population of 200 million so you have no vaccinated 99 so that means 99 percent of people may still be at risk and therefore we must keep safe we must keep this health advisory vaccination does not become a mask getting vaccination does not prevent social interaction getting vaccination does not become your hand washing yeah so even if you get vaccinated you are not protected from exposure all right doctor you are vaccinated on the left hand doctor that's the much we can take unfortunately we thank you very much for coming on to share you know your thoughts with us regarding this matter all right well the fact remains that people still think COVID-19 is a rich man's disease there's a you know there's an attitude amongst Nigerians regarding the use of face mask and all of that so I think the government does need to do more regarding sensitization because we know that that has dropped drastically yeah but there needs to be more of that so on that we haven't we had time to do more with regard sensitization we've been talking about this since 2020 we've had time you know and it once again and I don't like to always knock the government for you know its fellows here and there but you can't you know miss out on these things how much sensitization has been done in the whole of the last one year with regards COVID-19 the national orientation agency still has not woken up and so well let's let's take this on social media join us at plus TV Africa on Twitter especially thank you very much for being a part of our Tuesday morning today my name is Annetta Felix and I am a saugi obama wishing you a great day ahead