Coronavirus: Nigeria Tracing 6, 000 Potential Cases – DG, NCDC

The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has said that the centre is currently tracing at least 6, 000 cases of potential persons infected with the coronavirus.

The DG, Chikwe Ihekweazu said supported the lockdown move by Buhari said this is coming after testing 2, 000 persons in the country.

Speaking during an interview session with Channels TV, he said

“We appeal to Nigerians to bear the few weeks of pain to come and let’s see whether we can get on top of this.

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These weeks will allow our teams to have access to the contacts that are living around Lagos, FCT. We are following over 6,000 contacts of these 111 confirmed coronavirus 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.

“We hope that we can really use this time to buy some time to get ahead of the cases and ultimately see that curve start going down but in the next few days, we still do expect an increase in cases.

“We have currently tested well over 2000 people, we will update those figures today or tomorrow. We have increased the number of labs in our network to 6. We are activating Abakaliki today. There’d be a 7th lab in our network.

“We’re maximizing the opportunity of the equipment that we have and at the same time rolling out new labs. We’re very focused on increasing the testing capacity. We are being boxed down by people who do not require the test.”

 

Photo Credit: Getty