VIDEO: ‘We need rope!' Health workers drag suspected COVID-19 patient

A video of four men struggling to drag a Nigerian man into an ambulance, apparently for a COVID-19 test or treatment, is being circulated on Facebook.

It is unclear where and when the video was shot.

“I think we need a rope,” one of the unidentified men said in the video as the struggle became intense.

The man suspected to be a COVID-19 patient refused to be pinned down inside the ambulance. He sprang up and pushed his way out of the vehicle. “I am not going anywhere,” he said to the men.

“You are making your thing more difficult, I cannot understand,” another of the four men said to him. “If you cooperate well, we treat you very well, but if you behave like a criminal, you’ll not like it.”

The video, which is about two minutes long, portrays how difficult and clumsy it could be, sometimes, to get Nigerians tested and treated for COVID-19.

Apart from face masks, the four men did not wear PPEs. One of them did not even wear his face mask properly.

“Apprehending a COVID-19 patient in Nigeria for treatment is a war on its own,” said Franklyn Isong, the Chairman of the Civil Liberties Organisation, Akwa Ibom state chapter, who posted the video on Facebook.

The total number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Nigeria is 19,808 as of June 20.