Testing best way to tame Covid-19

I have had two horrid Covid-19 experiences in recent days. The first is that, two days ago, my old heart broke. A family friend died in hospital, a tragedy of massive proportions.

The bigger tragedy is the young family he leaves behind and the nagging question is whether nothing could have been done by his doctors to save his life.

 Were they overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases in this high-end private hospital? I mean, I also heard about a 78-year-old man with diabetes and hypertension who walked out of a much more modest facility after more than a week on oxygen.

The other horror is, of course the coronavirus test. As a 50-year-old man, life holds few terrors for me. However, the discomfort of that probe deep down the throat is one of life’s ugliest feelings. I accompany my teenage children, who pretend to be “grown up” and “adults”, to stressful situation so that I can hold their hand and calm them down. I was scandalised when they offered to sit with me and hold my hand as I gave the sample. What’s the world coming to?

However, when the door was closed and it was just me and the friendly medic, and as I struggled not to gag or flinch, and he was poking and stirring every which way, something happened, akin to the blood catching fire, which men of my generation from where I come from will recognise.

I found my hand clamped on his wrist, burning eye contact made and a rising pulse. These are very bad symptoms and, with a little effort, I settled back and offered the nostril.

Men, when you go for the test, it is OK to allow your children to hold your hand. It might keep you out of prison.

Covid-19 is running through our communities, leaving in its wake destroyed families, death and untold suffering. It has sickened 44.6 million people all over the world, 52,612 from our own country, and killed 1.1 million, 964 of them Kenyan. On average, 800 Kenyans are getting infected every day and the infection rate is rising — rather sharply. This is no longer a joke.

The type of draconian lockdowns we have experienced are, of course, out of the question. The Daily Nation has reported that, during that period, the country was sustained through debt running into billions. To be honest, we can’t afford that. If we were an organised, honest country, maybe we could get by with a little aid here and a little saving there. But we are not; we have thieves among us who will steal the very breath out of your lungs.

We have to keep the country open — safely. The question is, how do we do that?

Civic discipline

The first component is, of course, civic discipline. In Japan, as I have said before, households have thermometers at the door. You take your temperature before you step out. If you have a fever, you go back. Even here in Kenya, some of those schools which have reopened require parents to take their children’s temperature and send it ahead to school before the students are dropped off. If they have a fever, they don’t leave the house and, if they do, they will not be allowed into the school.

This diligence should be followed by everyone on every health protocol: Covering your face, staying two metres away from the next person and washing and sanitising your hands obsessively. And if you have symptoms, don’t try to flee the country; stay calm and seek help.

However, because we are neither disciplined nor terribly rational, enforcement is required. There should be stiff fines for those who violate health protocols. I respect many establishments in this country which would never sell alcohol during the closure.

There are others where drunks were served boiled chicken and beer behind closed doors.

Those who violate health protocols should get a custodial sentence and a hefty fine. Establishments which do not comply should automatically lose their licence, the owner fined and its managers jailed. We are talking about human life here.

I feel that the missing link, and which is of absolute importance, is testing. In my opinion, we are shy about spending money on tests, considering mass testing a “waste”. But I don’t know whether Covid control can be achieved without large-scale, possibly on-demand, testing.

Testing materials are no longer an issue and I believe the cost should have come down significantly. We should not go back to work, neither should schools reopen, without the testing of children and their families.

Protect the uninfected

Testing allows you to identify those who are infected so that they can receive treatment, be isolated and those whom they have come in contact with identified and also tested. This helps to tame the spread of the virus and protect the uninfected.

You can’t judge the severity of infections without testing. If you are going to confine your testing to the contacts of the infected, is the data so collected generalisable? If you are not testing randomly, how will you detect clusters and contain them?

Lastly, NHIF should pay for us all to be tested. It’s the only way to beat this horror.

[email protected].