From Segun Amure, (The New Diplomat’s Abuja Bureau)
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Tuesday stated that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lagos, Kaduna, and Plateau states are responsible for 80 percent of Covid-19 cases in the country.
According to NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, who spoke on Arise Television, on Tuesday, conducting more tests and aggressive implementation of public health measures will mitigate the risk of transmission as much as possible in the Covid-19 hotspots in the country.
Ihekweazu further urged physicians and healthcare workers to encourage people with symptoms like fever, weakness, cough etc. to go for COVID-19 tests instead of continuously treating malaria.
“We have gotten above 130,000 cases in Nigeria, and just over and about 1,600 deaths just under. We have done just over 1.3 million tests in new suspected cases that have led us to those figures.” Ihekweazu said.
He added further that, “We know we are not finding all the cases in Nigeria – many states are still not testing as they should be. But right now, 80 percent of all the cases in Nigeria are in the FCT and three states – Lagos, Kaduna and Plateau.”
“Lagos has by far the highest-burden of cases in Nigeria. This is really not surprising because we already know that the infection first got into Nigeria through a returning traveler to Lagos.
“Lagos is by far the most populous city in the country. Transmission of the virus is a factor of population. The virus itself, the environment, and all other factors play together to make Lagos the ideal opportunity for transmission.”
Ihekweazu commended the Lagos State Government for being “at the fulcrum of aggressive response” against the pandemic.
Speaking on Covid-19 Second wave, Ihekweazu said, “We are now seeing close to 2,000 cases a day, sometimes 1,500 – anything between that is well above the daily average of the first peak of cases. It means there is an intense transmission happening in many states in Nigeria.”
“We, therefore, have to continue the very aggressive implementation of public health measures that we have been carrying out across the country to mitigate the risk of transmission as much as possible.
“We can absolutely trust the data in terms of its representation of what is going on. What we need to do is get people to test more and to be more open to testing. We also need physicians and healthcare workers to be more encouraging of people to actually go for tests when they think they need one and stop treating people for malaria over and over again as we stated recently.”
He stated that the country has close to 120 working public and private laboratories for testing suspected COVID-19 cases.
Also, he added that Nigeria can’t get ahead of the rising infection cases when people keep “pretending that COVID-19 doesn’t exist or wishing it away.”
However, it would be recalled that The New Diplomat on Tuesday had reported that the Presidential Task Force (PTF) has declared Kogi State a high-risk state for refusing to acknowledge the existence of the disease and its failure to report testing, coupled with absence of isolation centers and therefore warned Nigerians to be wary of visiting the state.
