Edo State has recorded more deaths from COVID-19 than Abuja, although the Federal Capital Territory has over 13,000 infections more than the South-south state.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Edo is 3,862 and the number of deaths 144 as of February 3, according to data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Abuja has 17, 243 cases and 127 deaths.

Other COVID-19 statistics between the two states are as follows: number of persons currently on admission in Abuja is 6,115, while Edo is 632 and the number of people discharged after treatment in Abuja is 11,001, while that of Edo is 3,086.

Lagos, which is the epicentre of the viral infection in Nigeria, is the only state with a higher number of COVID-19 deaths than Edo.

Andrew Obi, the COVID-19 incident manager in Edo, said a lot of factors needed to be considered when comparing the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the state with that of other states.

Mr Obi, a medical doctor, said COVID-19 test and treatment have been integrated into the Edo healthcare system and that the state is running a massive, transparent, and targeted testing system which is why the number of infection and deaths appear to be higher than other states.

In other words, what Mr Obi is saying is that a low infection or death rate in some states, as announced by the centre for disease control, may not necessarily reflect the reality on ground if these states are not testing a high number of people and are not also doing targeted testing.

“If you test more and you are more targeted in your testing and you are reporting your results, you are reporting your deaths, you are definitely going to have more cases and possibly more deaths,” he said.

Some states, he said, could even underreport the pandemic “for whatever reason.”

“We are carrying out targeted testing, we have decentralised sample collection for testing across the 18 local government areas in the state.

“So, in every local government area, there are between two to five locations where people can access a facility for sample collection. In these locations, people can just walk in.

“And there’s synergy between the public and private hospitals. Some of these centres are general hospitals, some of them are primary healthcare facilities, and some of them are tertiary institutions like the University of Benin Teaching Hospital.

“If somebody goes to a private hospital, we have distributed our case distribution algorithm, and once anybody is having malaria-like symptoms or having an upper respiratory tract (infection) symptoms, we encourage them to immediately take samples for COVID-19 test,” he said.

Mr Obi said the case fatality rate in Edo is lower in the second wave of COVID-19, compared to the first wave.

“In the first wave it was between 4.1 per cent and 4.2 per cent, but in the second wave it is between 2.4 and 2.5 per cent,” he added.