On the 15th of August, Nollywood Superstar Omotola Jalade Ekeinde announced on her Instagram handle that she contracted COVID and was in isolation.
While making the announcement, the Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) awardee, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, did not disclose how she contracted the disease, instead, she shared a music video she produced to decry the mishaps in the society.
She, however, told her story in the popular filmmaker’s WhatsApp Group, Filmic, according to a report from Vanguard.
The WhatsApp group was busy, last Friday, debating how Nollywood can adhere strictly to the health guidelines of COVID-19 before reopening productions.
The 42-year-old filmmaker used the opportunity to tell her story while giving her opinion. She recalled that she started feeling sick on a movie set on August 3, 2020.
She said, “I hardly fall ill and so when I left the set and started having chills the next day or so, I knew something wasn’t right. I thought it might be stress. This was on Monday, August 3. I waited till Tuesday and it got worse. I was shaking uncontrollably and my temperature was going through the roof.”
“My spirit told me immediately, this is not malaria or fever. I have been extremely careful and paranoid about this COVID-19 stuff. So I told hubby I needed to be tested immediately. I have a son that has Asthma!”
“They came to test me on Wednesday and my result came out on Thursday evening … Positive. My world crashed. I felt crazy and empty.”
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“My symptoms were high fever and chills… luckily no other. But it was so bad, they contemplated coming to evacuate me as my viral loaf was high and I wasn’t getting better … but God arose for me. I went into isolation immediately. We got my result but my daughter started feeling funny.”
“So they had to come, to test the whole family … I had infected my daughter and asthmatic son! My God showed up for me as my son is asymptotic, positive but not sick. My daughter lost her smell and taste and had severe diarrhoea. All has stopped now, thank God.”
“My husband and last son tested negative respectively. We are all now in remission … taking another test soon.”
“It’s physically, spiritually and emotionally exhausting as the doctors tell you it’s a 50/50 chance. Nothing you do saves you. You can only take the vitamins, manage the symptoms and hope your body fights,”
Fear over No Widespread Testing
Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde in her comment also noted the fear of her doctors. She said the doctors are afraid that many people are living with the virus and because there is no widespread testing to discover if it is a case of COVID-19, they attribute it to Malaria, diarrhoea etc.
HSENations reports that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) website, as at the time of writing this report, shows that the agency has been able to only test the sample of 374,077 persons.
If the population of Nigeria stands at 195.9 million according to a 2018 WB report, only 0.2% of the people have been tested.
HSENations also gathered that a Punch Report showed that experts had said that “except Nigeria increases its testing capacity for COVID-19, the number of people tested for the viral infection will remain low”, consequentially, NCDC will be working and making decisions based on inaccurate data.
