NCDC DG, Chikwe Ihekweazu, explains difference between treatment of malaria and COVID-19

Following the flurry of reports linking malaria with COVID-19, the Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, has cleared the air, saying the two diseases are not related.

In the past two weeks there have been series of accounts from COVID-19 survivors claiming they were treated with malaria drugs while at the isolation center.

A former presidential spokesperson Dr Doyin Okupe was the first to announce that he and his wife were treated with chloroquine after testing positive for the virus.

A week after, the Founder of DAAR Communications Plc, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, while sharing his COVID-19 experience also wondered how the virus differs from malaria.

In a viral video, Dokpesi had said the medications administered on him while at the isolation center are malaria drugs.

Reacting to the claims during a webinar – “What’s the story behind Africa’s COVID-19 figure” – organised by Africa.com and monitored by Neusroom.

“COVID-19 is a new virus, so you can’t have a treatment pre-existing for a new disease, treatment only starts when a virus emerges…There is only one way in science to get treatment, that is doing clinical trials. Only one drug so far has shown signs of improving the outcomes of people with COVID-19, apart from that nothing else has improved outcomes.”

Ihekweazu added that malaria is a completely different disease from COVID-19, saying “there’s a very little similarity between these two diseases, except that the present in the same way. The only controversy is around the use of hydroxychloroquine which has no effect on COVID-19, it has also been demonstrated to have some harmful effects. There’s no similarity aside from clinical presentations of these two illnesses”.

He also revealed that 80% of those infected by COVID-19 won’t show symptoms and most of those that do show symptoms recover “entirely on their own just by the body immune system responding to it”.