The Nigeria Center for Disease Control says it is tracing over 6,000 people that have had contacts with cases of the novel Coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19).
Chikwe Ihekweazu, director- general of the agency said this on National Television on Monday while advising Nigerians to work with the agency in compliance with the measures instituted by President Mohammad Buhari to tackle the pandemic.
“We expect cases of COVID19 in Nigeria to rise as we improve capacity to detect and test. Our laboratories are activated to function 24/7,” hee said.
According to the director, these few weeks will help the teams to have access to the contacts that are living around Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory.
Nigeria’s coronavirus cases rose to 111 late Sunday, following t he confirmation of additional 14 cases by the NCDC.
“We are following over 6,000 Contacts of these 111 confirmed cases across these two cities.”
“Every time we have a new case, we add about 50 to 60 contacts that we then have to follow every single day for 14 days,” said Ihekweazu.
The NCDC boss said that Nigeria’s ability to flatten the curve of COVID19 in the country depends on all Nigerians.
“Our goal is to mobilise all available resources to tackle COVID19 in Nigeria. We remain grateful for the support we have received so far from stakeholders and partners,” he said.
Nigeria now has six functional laboratories with the capacity to test for COVID19 to tackle the pandemic.
“The latest laboratory is at the University College Hospital, Ibadan and we are working to expand testing capacity. World Health Organisation has supported through the training of medical personnel,” Ihekweazu said.
According to the agency the molecular laboratory network is made up of NCDC National Reference Laboratory, Abuja; Irrua Specialist Teaching Hosptial, Edo; Nigeria Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Lagos; Lagos University Teaching Hosptial, Lagos; University College Hospital, Ibadan, and African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Disease.
NCDC says it’s working to set up more laboratories.
“We aim to scale up to thirteen laboratories in the next three weeks in Abakaliki, Maiduguri, Kano, Sokoto, Port-Harcourt, Jos, Kaduna as we quickly ramp up COVID19 testing capacity in Nigeria,” NCDC said.
