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5 more numbers to explain the pandemic
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Uncertain times call for trusted analysis on Nigeria's economic & business outlook. To purchase or pre-order a Stears Data Economic or Industry report, visit our Reports page.
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Five weeks ago, we went through six interesting numbers to explain the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, Nigeria had “65” cases, had tested 180 people, and had never borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
And of course, President Buhari on TV had never addressed the nation twice in three weeks since he came back into power.
Even though many of us are locked indoors—some of you are even reading this newsletter in the same spot as the last one—the world has been changing.
We have new words and phrases:
- EBITDAC: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and Covid-19.
- Business Quarantine: The dress code for work-from-home zoom calls.
- Influenzers: Online Covid influencers.
As monotonous as the inside life has been, COVID-19 brings something new every day.
In this week’s newsletter, we look at five more interesting numbers we have spotted: 4, 300 million, 2.5 million, 19, x9.
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4
Paulo Dybala, an Argentine striker at Juventus Football Club, has tested positive for the coronavirus four times in the last six weeks. According to his girlfriend, Oriana Sabatini, the pair recently tested positive three days after a negative test result.
The situation is not peculiar to Dybala and his partner.
There have been reports in other countries where people have appeared to be reinfected after being discharged from the hospital.
Naturally, this has triggered debates around immunity to the virus. Could it be that we don’t become immune after contracting the virus?
For starters, our immune system works like our memories. So, just like how Nigeria often forgets the past and finds itself in the same problem (oil crisis), our immune system can also forget how to fight a disease.
At the moment, we don’t fully understand whether this applies to COVID-19 immunity but scientists are using other strains of coronaviruses to provide estimates.
The current consensus is immunity for one year.
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Still, that doesn’t explain how Dybala tested positive three days after a negative test. It turns out that clinical results show that recovered patients who later test positive for the virus were not actually reinfected; the results were false positives.
And there lies another dimension in the coronavirus episode: unreliable tests. There are many reasons why tests are not entirely accurate. For one, the world is trying to make them very quickly. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has even loosened rules for getting tests out on the market.
Another weak spot is how medical staff are trained to use the equipment. A test can provide the wrong result if the health worker doesn’t go far back enough when conducting a swab test.
Ironically considering the title of this newsletter, it’s when you go deeper than the numbers that you understand how complex this crisis is.
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300 million
A larger number with significance to match.
This is the number of coronavirus vaccines the United States is aiming to have produced by the end of the year.
The Presidency is pulling together pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and the military in a program called “Operation Warp speed”.
A fitting name for a scheme that looks to cut the development time for a vaccine by eight months.
You may remember we concluded last week’s newsletter with Oxford University and their plans to have a vaccine ready by September. The University is working with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to develop the drug. They say that as early as June, we should have an idea of whether the vaccine is effective and safe.
When a Sky News reporter asked the CEO of AstraZeneca when production of the vaccine would begin, he surprised audiences by announcing that the company had already started production.
Of course, this is great news but there’s a small detail to pay attention to.
300 million. That’s approximately the population of the United States. Do you see where this is going?
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The CEO of AstraZeneca went on to say that citizens of the United Kingdom would be prioritised when a successful vaccine is rolled out.
We shouldn’t be surprised, US and UK taxpayers are funding these vaccine programs. But what this highlights is how difficult it might be for developing countries like Nigeria to get their hands on vaccines.
Organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) will of course step in to bring about some global equity. They are already calling on drugmakers to share patents and pool intellectual property for vaccines.
This will allow other governments or generic drugmakers to manufacture and sell the developed vaccines. It's likely that will be the case but do all countries have the capacity to manufacture at a large enough scale?
We wait to see but what’s clear is there will likely be some inequality in the speed at which countries can vaccinate their citizens.
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2.5 million
It looked like game over for Nigeria when the price of West Texas Intermediate—the main type of oil sold in North America—fell below $0 in mid-April. How would the Nigerian economy survive when our most valuable physical commodity had become worthless?
The good news is that it is not game over for Nigeria yet; we still have a few more rounds to go.
Oil prices in the United States crashed that day because sellers only had one more day to sell the oil produced for that month and nobody wanted to buy. How come? Thanks to COVID-19, far fewer people are travelling, driving, manufacturing, and doing all the other things that need oil.
Today, lots of oil—including 50 million barrels of Nigerian oil—floats unwanted at sea. This doesn’t sound great, but at least oil prices are back to their COVID-19 normal since then.
The bad news is that the game might soon be over for the Nigerian oil economy still.
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Back in 2016, when we were still young and hopeful, the government set a national target to produce 2.5 million barrels of oil each day. At the time, Nigeria was barely producing 1.8 million barrels a day as Niger Delta militants had taken up arms again.
How much oil does Nigeria now produce in 2020? Something like 2 million barrels a day.
However, this is going to go even lower over the next few years. Nigeria is part of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreement to cut production to support prices during the pandemic.
Over the next two years, Nigeria is supposed to cut its oil production by between 250,000 to 450,000 barrels a day. To cap it off, because a lot of Nigeria’s oil wells are old, they may never come back online once they are shut off during this period.
The irony is that oil prices will eventually rise again once the worst of COVID-19 is past. But Nigeria’s oil production may never recover from what happens this year.
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19
A smaller number, yet potentially the most powerful.
When Asia and Europe were in the heat of dealing with COVID-19, many feared the worst for Africa. How would the continent deal with the virus given our inadequate healthcare systems?
There were predictions that hundreds of thousands would die.
The virus arrived and there have been deaths and economic losses. But it’s not as bad as people expected. In fact, Africa’s COVID-19 numbers can’t even be compared with the Western world.
The entire African continent has as many deaths (1,400) as one county within a state in the US—Cook, Illinois.
Of course, our significantly lower testing rates explain why we have fewer cases. However, even when you compare the African countries conducting more frequent tests to countries in Europe, the picture is still better on the continent.
South Africa has conducted as many tests as France did a month ago. Yet, South Africa has 140 deaths compared to France which had over 4,000 deaths. South Africa’s first case was also over a month after France’s.
To investigate further, we can look at overall deaths in South Africa. Just in case, like Kano, deaths could be rising under the radar.
It doesn't appear to be the case. South Africa’s overall fatality numbers are within normal ranges. In fact, they have reduced as a result of fewer traffic accidents and homicides.
So, it’s possible that testing aside, Africa could be doing better.
One explanation is our young population. The median age of an African is 19 years, compared with 38 in the US and 40 in Europe.
Italy’s is 47.
It's a plausible explanation given that 80% of deaths in the US have been adults aged 65 and over.
Age also determines how many hospitals will be required.
Nigeria’s median age is 18. And, according to Chinese data, only 0.3% of symptomatic cases require hospitalisation within the 10-19 age bracket. For Italy’s age range however, 5% of symptomatic cases require hospitalisation.
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x9
We end with the most puzzling number of the lot. It signifies how many more times Ghana has tested compared to Nigeria: 9.
As of the last day in April, Ghana had conducted 115,000 tests, compared with under 13,000 in Nigeria.
Even though Nigeria reported its index case more than two weeks before Ghana, they have managed to test 9 times more people than we have.
“Test and trace has worked for us,” Ghana’s President said at the end of April. Indeed, the country has managed to flatten its curve (the rate of daily case increase), allowing them to ease lockdown restrictions.
How has Ghana left Nigeria behind in testing capacity?
It seems the Nigerian government has not been able to acquire test kits on the international market in time. Ghana was quick to act, and, last month, the government ordered 50,000 test kits, most of which arrived a week later. Other deals followed.
The Nigerian government on the other hand has not been able to negotiate similar arrangements and has relied instead on donations from international organisations, the most significant being Jack Ma’s 20,000 kit donation.
The United Nations, with help from the European Union and IHS Nigeria, also supplied 10,000 test kits; Samsung Heavy Industries donated 5,000.
There have been no reports of the Federal Government itself successfully procuring kits.
Evidence suggests it has been struggling. On Saturday, The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Director, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, made an open plea on Twitter for the extraction kits needed for an accurate COVID-19 test. He blamed supply chain issues for the disruption in getting items into the country.
It is possible that the scarcity of these extraction kits is to blame for Nigeria’s slow testing rate despite the test kit donations received.
Despite the failures, Dr Ihekweazu is optimistic. The NCDC boss told the press earlier in the week that a target had been set to test 2 million Nigerians in the next three months.
That’s 160,000 tests a week. Not even the UK has been able to achieve that.
Maybe NCDC is motivated by Nigeria’s superhero, Dangote, and his team—Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID)—who have ordered 250,000 test kits and 150,000 extraction kits.
Alas, even as we welcome higher testing numbers, we don’t expect to see 2 million headlining a Stears newsletter anytime soon.
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Welcome to our weekly insight on the Nigerian economy. Take a moment to subscribe if this email was forwarded to you, or forward it to a friend! To get our daily news on WhatsApp, click here and send "Subscribe".
Uncertain times call for trusted analysis on Nigeria's economic & business outlook. To purchase or pre-order a Stears Data Economic or Industry report, visit our Reports page.
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