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Confirmation of Covid-19 cases in Kogi not controversial in anyway —NCDC

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The Director-General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Chikwe Ihekweazu has said that there was nothing controversial in the confirmation of two Covid-19 cases in Kogi State.

For the first time, Kogi was on Wednesday listed among Nigerian states with the record of the dreaded virus.

The NCDC on its Wednesday, May 27, Covid-19 data, recorded two cases of the virus against Kogi State.

The news did not go down well with the state government as its Commissioner for Health, Saka Haruna-Audu, in a statement Thursday morning refuted the results.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Kogi govt accuses NCDC of fraud, says it doesn’t trust agency’s credbility

Claiming that the state had conducted hundreds of tests for the virus and all returned negative, Haruna-Audu insisted that the state was still free from Covid-19.

“We have also continued to insist that Kogi state will not be a party to any fictitious COVID19 claims which is wht we do not recognize any COVID19 test conducted by Kogite outside the boundaries of the state except initiated by us,” he added.

But responding to that during the daily press briefing of the Presidential Taskforce on Covid19 in Abuja on Thursday, Ihekweazu said:

“There is actually no dilemma in the two cases. They followed absolutely normal practice. The patient that was referred from the Federal Medical Center (FMC) to the national hospital. This is a normal referral pathway when you have a case. The physicians in the national hospital suspected Covid-19 from the clinical symptoms of the patient, asked for a test, it came out positive. The individual lives in Kogi State.

“Your public health response is based on where you live because that is where your contacts are so this is not controversial in anyway. Standard practice was followed. Once the results came out, the state epidiemiologist was informed that he has to do contact tracing around this patient. It is the state’s responsibility to do that contact tracing. So we hope they do it.”

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