Nigerian Tests Positive For Coronavirus In U.S.

A Nigerian man has been hospitalized in Maryland, United States, after testing positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Saturday.

The Mayor of Washington D.C., Murial Bowser, announced this at a news conference on Saturday night.

The man, said to be in his 50s, lives in Nigeria but had recently visited his family members in Washington D.C. before visiting Maryland where he tested positive for COVID-19.

Bowser said Washington D.C. had also confirmed its presumptively first COVID-19 case in a man who had no history of international travel and no close contacts to any other confirmed cases across the U.S.

“With his test yielding presumptive positive, D.C. Health has started its investigation in keeping with CDC guidelines,” she said.

Maryland and Washington D.C., where the two new cases were confirmed on Saturday, share the same border.

It is not yet ascertained how the Nigerian who tested positive for COVID-19 in Maryland contracted the virus, but Nigeria had recently confirmed its first case of the virus in an Italian who recently travelled to Lagos from Milan, Italy.

Since the first confirmed case in Nigeria, authorities in the country are yet to confirm another case of the disease.

Other African countries, including South Africa, Senegal, Algeria, Egypt, Togo and Cameroon, have confirmed cases of the virus.

COVID-19 is said to have killed over 3,200 and infected over 100,000 people across over seventy countries since it first broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.