Nigeria Steps Up Measures Against Coronavirus

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said the country is making conscious efforts to prevent the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country. 

Part of such efforts includes the ongoing procurement of critical medical counter measures to prevent COVID-19 outbreak in the country. 

The NCDC had recently convened  training on ‘Infection Prevention and Control (IPC)’ as part of preparations against COVID-19 in Nigeria and Africa at large.

The training came after Nigeria’s NCDC was identified by the Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC) to lead the IPC working group tasked with strengthening prevention capacity against the disease across Africa.

The NCDC held the training in collaboration with the Africa CDC and with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Infection Control Network Africa (ICAN).

The collaboration was necessitated by WHO’s identification of African countries as being at-risk of the ongoing epidemic because of the significant travel and trade connections with China.

The NCDC had earlier in the month released a hotline to enable Nigerians report suspected cases of coronavirus in the country.

The agency also gave guidelines to help members of the public identify a potential case of Coronavirus.

The centre said the public could report a suspected case if they knew of persons with “acute respiratory illness, (including severe patients who have been hospitalised) presenting with fever, cough, difficulty breathing AND who within 14 days before onset of illness has any one of the following exposures:

“1. History of travel to China 14 days prior to symptoms onset OR

“2. Close contact with a confirmed case of CoV infection OR

“3. Exposure to health- care facility in a country where hospital associated nCoV infections have been reported”

According to the NCDC, a reasonable ground to suspect a case includes when “testing for 2019-nCoVis inconclusive or for whom testing was positive on a pan-coronavirusassay.”

It said a coronavirus case could be said to be confirmed in “any person with laboratory confirmation of 2019nCov* infection with or without signs and symptoms.”

The NCDC urged members of the public to report suspected cases to 07032864444 to enable it arrange for sample collection and testing.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s health ministry had also recently increased screening measures at points of entry into the country to prevent the virus from being imported into the country.