Nigeria Centre for Disease Control on Sunday evening confirmed eight new cases of coronvirus in the country.
“Eight new cases of #COVID19 have been reported in Nigeria: 5 in Lagos, 2 in the FCT and 1 in Kaduna State,” NCDC tweeted.
*As at 09:30 pm 5th April there are 232 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria. Thirty-three have been discharged with five deaths.”
While the total number of the tested patients is not made public, it is widely believed that Nigeria is not testing people enough due to limited testing kits.
Last Wednesday, Nigeria received test kits and protective gear from China’s richest man, Jack Ma, to help fight novel coronavirus.
Nigeria’s top health official, Abdulaziz Abdullahi, said that the country received 100,000 face masks, 1,000 protective gowns and 20,000 test kits and they will be distributed to frontline health workers and hospital laboratories.
But after recieving the test kits there are still difficulties in tracing people that might have had contacts with positive patients before they were isolated.
Director-General NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, earlier this week disclosed that his team was looking for about 6,000 people who had contacts with COVID-19 patients in Lagos and Abuja.
“These weeks will allow our teams to have access to the contacts that are living around Lagos and FCT,” he said on Monday.
“We are following over 6,000 contacts of the 111 confirmed cases across these two cities. Every time we have a new case, we add about 50 to 60 contacts to follow every single day for 14 days,” he added.
As the number has climbed up to 232 cases from 111 cases at the time he made the disclosure, and going by NCDC method of tracing Nigeria is looking at least 13,000 people for tests.
Nigeria Government has also expressed that the country may experience “exponential” increase in coronavirus infections in “days ahead” if the contacts of confirmed cases are not tracked down quicker.
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