June 11, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
Past and present week presents us rising COVID 19 figures to cause to pause the revelry and reflect on safety issues as a country. For some time we were in single digit but that has changed for the worst in double digits. Yesterday it is 38, the day before 17 cases and the pattern has been such that gradual increment has been noticeable.
On Freetown street especially in central business districts has been manned military personnel checking for those without face mask. That has been a good marketing opportunity for the nose mask sellers. We who had long discarded the nose mask wearing were compelled to buy and start using it, whether covering it below the chin as opposed to covering the nose. The hypocrisy in our usage the mask is another issue that can be hardly helped here.
The disregard for hand washing has equally been widespread since the curfew was lifted; and a sense of ‘we are free’ set in. We have behaving as if it were a return to normalcy. People started crowding. We have no regard for social distancing these days. The upbeat mood of the country was even given the impetus with the landing of COVID 19 Vaccine.
Its roll out is IN earnest and we have started hearing hailers using megaphones, directing members of the public and citizens to designated areas to take the vaccines. If the radios and televisions have not been sufficient in getting people to go for the vaccines; public outreach campaign is going to hopefully make a difference in this context of denial and public apprehension that the vaccines are not safe and prone to adverse side effects. Those who hold such pessimistic views are huge in number and even as they know that people are taking the vaccines without coming down with sicknesses their peddled phobia is gaining momentum. It will take robust risk communication to dispel such unfounded and unscientific notions.
But the truth is in the COVID 19 case numbers climbing up; telling us that we are still in woods as a nation and must guard ourselves in behavior change patterns as it were, when the crisis warranted lock down. Nobody wants to go back to the lock down as some countries in the west have regressed in the face of resurgence in new strain of the virus. India easily comes to mind when we talk about lockdown these days. We as a nation cannot be reminded by that macabre Indian reality to want refrain from converging in football arena in leagues that played across the country.
Where the number rise of COVID 19 cases is connected, the causation of the new surge remains a pertinent question for the risk communicators. Our situation is getting worst in the Mano River sub region lately. Is it from inbound or outbound sources that the virus is transmitted? The profiling of the cases must answer this question to aid the surveillance and roll-back effort of the numbers to single, even zero digit. We have been making such gains, why now?
NaCOVERC must mobilize the human and material resources to redirect national sensitivity to the unfolding trend. There has to be more open conversation about the rising numbers for people to believe and disabuse themselves of misguided ideas that are flung here and there to detract the truth. Our people must be saved from the Infodemic-tainted pandemic information- a virus by itself.