Twenty four hours after five persons tested positive to coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, four new cases were confirmed in Lagos yesterday, with the state government tracing no fewer than 1,300 persons.
Also, one of the daughters of President Muhammadu Buhari is currently in self-isolation, shortly after returning from the United Kingdom.
Ondo State also yesterday recorded a suspected case of the virus, with the state House of Assembly directing the executive arm of government to close all schools and ban gatherings at all high-density places
These came on a day the 36 state governors, under the aegis of Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, said they would work in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, to ensure functional testing and isolation centres for the disease are established in every state of the federation.
The governors also set up a committee to review the $57 oil benchmark, falling oil prices, among others.
This is even as some major religious denominations and groups, including the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, Ansar-Ud-Deen Society of Nigeria and the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, yesterday pledged to abide by the ban placed by Lagos and Ogun state governments on public gatherings.
Both governments had declared on Wednesday that they would not tolerate gatherings of more than 50 persons in a place, saying the measure is geared towards stemming the spread of the disease.
With the latest addition of four new cases in Lagos, the country now has 12 infected persons.
Addressing journalists a few days ago in Lagos, Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, who also disclosed that the Italian Index case had tested negative to the virus for the first time, explained that a second test would also be conducted on him.
He said: “19 people were tested for COVID-19 on (Wednesday) in Lagos and four out of them tested positive to the virus and had been isolated for treatment at the Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba area of Lagos.”
He said the first of the four new cases who tested positive to the disease was a contact of the third case, the woman who returned from the UK some days ago and tested positive, adding that the second new case is a female who returned from France on March 14 aboard Turkish Airline’s flight TK 1830.
The third case, he said, is a Nigerian male in his 50s who had not travelled anywhere, but tested positive to the disease.
Abayomi stated that the fourth new case was a Nigerian male who arrived the country on March 13 from Frankfurt, Germany on Lufthansa Airline’s flight LH568.
He said more tests were still being conducted, adding that it was clear that “we have combination of imported cases and local transmission.’’
The commissioner appealed to those who were on the two flights to start self-isolation and call the emergency numbers if they had any symptoms of COVID-19.
He added that the Index case had tested negative but insisted that he would be put through another test to ascertain if the virus had cleared from his body.
