The Nigeria Center for Disease Control has said that the mass deaths reported in Kano are still under investigation.
The NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu on Monday disclosed this at a press conference of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
Ihekweazu said the Kano State Government and the NCDC were still investigating the recent increase in deaths in Kano.
In his word, “We are also working hard to investigate the causes of the deaths that have been reported. Mortality surveillance is not easy. In a few days or a week, we will be able to produce the report.
“We understand the difficulties and anxiety, but we will not stop until we get to the bottom of this. There is no magic bullet to solve these problems. It will take more time, strong will, and collaboration from all. We will not be distracted by any politics or insinuations.”
The Director-General further reacted to his tweet on Sunday, he said he was misunderstood where he said Nigeria was in dire need of extraction kits.
He said, “In my tweet on Sunday, I asked for extraction kits and not the same thing as a test kit. We have a supply chain of all the commodities, but we have a challenge with the supply chain of all the things coming into the country now. These are things that we have ordered and in the process of coming in, we suddenly ran out of the commodities.
“Rather than shutting 13 or 15 labs, I put up that tweet. Out of all the criticisms that we got, people came in to solve the problems and brought the extraction kits. Some offered them free because they had them in their warehouses.”
“What we have in the country now, with the new Rosche machine we launched today (Monday), is about 50,000 capacities, but the challenge is collecting samples and coordinating all of them. Every new lab comes with logistics of travels and transportation by road challenges.
“This weekend, we approved the inclusion of a firm called 54G, a private sector company that will start testing in Lagos and Ogun states. We are currently in discussion to move part of the operation to Kano State.”
Meanwhile, the West African Pilot News (WAP) had reported Kano State Government of saying the mass death in Kano is not COVID-19 related.
Many Nigerians on social media had described the Kano State Government position as audio-autopsy, this led to the twitter trend on audio-autopsy.
Last week, the West African Pilot News (WAP) in an Editorial Giveaway described the official reaction of Kano State Government as a puzzle waiting to be solved.
