‘You cannot expect compliance’: Social distancing rules stretched to breaking point as Africa’s largest city returns to work

Lagos reopens its packed bus network to commuters after a five-week national lockdown, despite rising Covid-19 case numbers and warnings from WHO

Motorists queue in a traffic gridlock as commercial activities return at the end of a five-week coronavirus lockdown (AFP)

People in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and the epicentre of its coronavirus outbreak, started heading back to work this week after a 35-day lockdown, even as the numbers of new cases did not appear to be tailing off.

The World Health Organisation warned on Thursday that if Covid-19 cannot be contained in Africa it will claim the lives of up to 190,000 people by the end of the year, a figure that the WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said she hoped would spur the strongest action across the continent.

But for people in its most populous metropolis and one of the most crowded cities in the world, social distancing has proved to be a challenging task – one that is only going to get more difficult as workers return to commuting on packed public transport or visiting cheek-by-jowl urban markets.