COVID-19: 3,550 contacts found, cases now 184 in Nigeria

The Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chike Ihekweazu, on Thursday disclosed that 3,3550 contacts of COVID-19 patients had been found.

He also disclosed that confirmed cases in the country had jumped to 184 as at Thursday.

Ihekweazu disclosed these at a press conference organised in Abuja by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, adding that the 3,550 people were being monitored for symptoms of coronavirus, assuring Nigerians that the Federal Government was fighting the virus.

It would be recalled that the NCDC DG had said on Tuesday that 5000 contacts were being traced, adding that there was an urgent need to reach all the contacts.

Responding to a question on how far the tracing had gone on Thursday, he said: “We have traced and monitoring 71 per cent of all of them. By the end of today, that figure will increase. This is what this period of two weeks is for. Lagos has been transformational in the last few days. The teams have been able to move incredibly across the state to monitor all these contacts.

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“The early cases had large number of contacts. Many of them were on planes and we have to basically contact everyone. But everyone we identify now has a maximum of 30 or 40 contacts. So the number of contacts in confirmed cases is reducing because we no longer have people that were exposed to a plane.”

Speaking on the distribution of the kits donated to the country by a Chinese billionaire, Ihekweazu said every state government was asked to come to Abuja to collect its share of the kits.

The NCDC boss also denied any preferential treatment of anyone at the Coronavirus isolation centres across the country.

He said: “There is no preferential care at treatment centres. Everybody is getting the same level of care in Abuja and Lagos and health care workers are really working hard to make sure everybody is supported through the period of care.”

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