Global Lessons of COVID-19: Nigerian Perspective

Abstract

COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic forcing governments worldwide to develop global standard control measures from travel restrictions, lockdowns or curfews, workplace risk management, the closure of public spaces; basic hygiene, social distancing to the use of facemasks; with increasing demand for care, challenging health systems and teaching multiple lessons which are documented in this paper. The COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented in several ways. It has affected lives, the economy of our country, travel, and social interactions. This has required a complete re-routing of our public health resources to prize-fight one disease. While building during a pandemic, has led to the achievement of several milestones, there is no doubt that the world could have been better prepared if we invested more in pandemic preparedness. Therefore, we are seizing this moment of commotion to build more sustainable and resilient systems for health security in Nigeria. A holistic scoping review was carried out to map the challenges, burden, and significant lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic appropriately documented thus far, as well as various preventive interventions (pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical medications e.g., vaccination, safe hygienic practices, social distancing, use of facemasks and border closure) adopted. Importance of infection prevention and control (IPC) as well as inestimable values of water in the environment have been diametrically established. The lessons from COVID -19 were enormous, provided reasons to reshape our public health systems and global health security. This is a time for a paradigm- shift!