With Five New Cases of COVID-19 Confirmed, Nigerian Government to Implement Travel Restriction
The government of Nigeria has announced travel restrictions following the discovery of five more cases of coronavirus in the country, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to eight. The move to restrict entry into the country for persons coming from 13 countries with over 1000 cases of COVID-19 was announced on Wednesday morning by the Presidential Task Force on the Control of the Coronavirus led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.
The countries are China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Japan, France, Germany, Norway, U.S, the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Switzerland. The government said it would temporarily suspend visas issued to nationals from these countries and that Nigerian citizens coming from these countries would undergo supervised isolation for fourteen days.
The travel restriction which would become effective from Friday 20th March, would last for four weeks.
Meanwhile Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, announced a shock news of 5 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at almost the same time the Presidential Task Force announced the travel restriction. The announcement of the latest infection is coming a day after the third case was announced. Globally, there are 200,000 confirmed cases of the infection and over 7,500 deaths.
“I regret to announce the confirmation of 5 new #COVID19 cases in Nigeria bringing the total no. of confirmed cases to 8,” the Dr. Ehanire wrote in a wrote in a tweet. “We have intensified contact tracing for these cases to control the risk of spread and @NCDCGov is already supporting the response efforts.”
Dr. Ehanire, in a press briefing said of the three cases that arrived from the U.S, two – a mother and her 6-week old baby – are Nigerians. The two cases that arrived from the UK are Nigerians. The fifth person is a foreign national who came in through the land border — this makes the first case of infection via land border in Nigeria. He explained that the foreign national was on a biking trip, adding that there were two of them, but the other tested negative.
The Minister of Health also said that the four cases in Lagos and one in Ekiti were “all being followed up and supported by State Health Authorities and the NCDC.
“Nigeria is in the importation stage of #COVID19, not the Community Transmission Stage. That’s why we are very focused on contact Tracing at this time,” Dr. Ehanire said.
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