NEWS
Oyo debunks two deaths of Delta COVID-19 rumours
OYO State Incident Manager and Coordinator of the Emergency Operations Centre, Olabode Ladipo, says it is misleading to say that COVID-19 Delta variant has killed two persons in the state.
Ladipo made the clarification yesterday in Ibadan while debunking reports in some online media that two residents of the state were killed by the deadly virus.
According to him, I made it clear that the sample was taken after death, and so it would be unfair to say they died from complications of the Delta strain.
“That the Delta variant killed two people in the state was not what I said. As part of our surveillance strategy for COVID-19, we took samples from quite a number of people, including some dead persons. We sent the samples to The African Centre of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Disease (ACEGID), Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State. We then discovered that some of the cases had the Delta variant of the Coronavirus. I didn’t say that those dead persons were killed by the Delta variant; let us not create unnecessary public panic,” he said.
Continuing, Oladipo said that he didn’t have much opportunity to assess the client for a long period before death.
“It could have arisen from a coexisting morbidity which complicated the infection. As such, the point is that the variant was isolated from samples taken from the deceased,” he explained.
He, therefore, appealed to the state residents to consistently apply all guidelines earlier stipulated by the task force.
“I will be more comfortable, if I see people wearing their masks again; lots of people have abandoned some of these crucial preventive measures. The Delta variant has virtually the same symptoms as the earlier ones: coughs, breathlessness, but with this variant, which is more transmissible, significantly, there is muscular pain and more of diarrhoea. Also, yesterday, we admitted two people based on breathlessness. It is not true that the Delta variant doesn’t have symptoms, it does have symptoms,” he added.
