The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said there is the likelihood of more new cases of the coronavirus springing up in the country.
Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), while providing update on COVID-19 in the country, on Thursday in Abuja.
He said “Like any medical test, there has to be a clinical reason to perform the procedure. In the case of COVID-19, someone must have symptoms of the disease like fever, coughing and shortness of breath.
“Travel to an area with active transmission of coronavirus is also a factor, as well as close contact with someone who is sick or had traveled. It’s advisable for doctors to test their patients for other respiratory illnesses before submitting a coronavirus test.
“At present we do not recommend testing for those that do not have symptoms. It can take anywhere from two to 14 days for coronavirus symptoms to develop and until they do the test won’t pick up signs of the disease.
“It is more about making sure that you identify whether someone that has exposure develops disease or not. Testing them early on in their incubation period doesn’t help settle that question.
“Even those who have been asked to quarantine often will not be tested until they have symptoms.
“We want Nigerians to keep in mind that we have the capacity to test but we want to make sure that those tests are used in the best way possible, at the state and national level we don’t have unlimited supplies. We want to focus on individuals who are in a high risk situation.
“Physical social distancing is proven to be one of the most effective ways to reduce the spread of illness during an outbreak.
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“This means making changes in your everyday routines to minimize close contact with others, including avoiding crowded places and non-essential gatherings, avoiding common greetings, such as handshakes.
“Limiting contact with people at higher risk like older persons and those in poor health, keeping a distance of at least two arms-length approximately two metres from others,” he advised.
“The risk would vary between and within communities, but given the increasing number of cases in the country, the risk to Nigerians was considered high. This does not mean that all Nigerians will get the disease. It means that there is already a significant impact on our health care system.
“If we do not flatten the epidemic curve now, the increase of COVID-19 cases could impact our health care system”.
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