MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th February, 2020) The work of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and the African country's history of combating epidemics should mean that Nigerian authorities are well prepared to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease, officially called COVID-19, Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, said on Friday.
Ryan's comments follow the confirmation of the first case of COVID-19 in Nigeria earlier in the day. According to Osagie Ehanire, the country's health minister, the patient is an Italian national who traveled from Milan to Lagos on February 25.
"The establishment of Nigeria's CDC, the fact that Nigeria has been fighting measles, cholera, it's been fighting polio, it's been fighting Lassa fever ... Nigeria has well-tested mechanisms for dealing with these dangerous pathogens. And we have great confidence in our colleague, [Nigerian CDC chief] Dr. Chikwe [Ihekweazu] and his staff, to be able to do that containment exercise," Ryan told a daily press briefing.
The leading health official told reporters that Nigeria had the facilities to diagnose COVID-19 as laboratories built to contain other epidemics can now be used to trace the coronavirus disease.
Despite this, several challenges, such as the significant number of internally displaced people in the north of the country, still pose an epidemiological threat, Ryan stated.
"That is not to say that there are not risks. Nigeria is a vast country with a huge population, and it has many vulnerable people, especially in the north, and lots of refugees and many others. So it is disappointing to see the disease arrive, but it is also heartening to see that the disease was picked up on a single importation, was confirmed quickly, and that isolation and other activities have already begun," he stated.
Earlier in the briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that for the third day in a row, the number of new cases reported outside of China has exceeded the number of new cases in China and that five countries, of which Nigeria is one, recorded their first case of COVID-19 in the preceding 24 hours.
The disease has so far infected over 83,750 people since it was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December. More than a third of people have been cured of the disease, including more than 3,780 individuals in the last 24 hours. More than 2,860 people have died after contracting COVID-19.
