Reprieve came for terrified Nigerians on Monday as the minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said that no new case of coronavirus (COVID-19) has been confirmed in the country.

The minister also disclosed that the four Chinese nationals, who were quarantined after they returned from their country to Plateau State, had tested negative to the virus. Ehanire assured Nigerians that the federal government would do all it takes to ensure that Nigerians are adequately protected through proper screening at the entry ports to prevent the importation of the disease into the country.

While addressing a press conference in Abuja, yesterday, he said that about 14 tests had been done which all turned negative except the first index case in the country.

The minister said that „as of 1st March, there was no new confirmed case in Nigeria.”

He explained that since the confirmation of the Italian carrier of virus in the country, the focus had been on containment, including contact tracing to risk and management of the case.

On the flight that brought the index case, Ehanire said that the Ports Health Services and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) had been supporting the Lagos and Ogun State governments to carry out contact tracing and other response activities.

Ehanire said: „Currently the contacts of the index case are identified as 19 in Lagos, 39 in Ogun State. We are in touch with these contacts, who are under supervised self-isolation and the states have provided them with temperature monitoring tools.

“The Multisectoral Emergency Centre is led by the NCDC and was activated on 28th January, 2020 and it continues to coordinate national response activities. At the state levels, both Lagos and Ogun have activated their EOC‘s also.

“We have also deployed national rapid response teams from the NCDC which are working closely with all the states. Over the past few days, the NCDC has updated guidelines for health workers and advisory for the public,“ the minister stated, adding that there was a brand new state of the art emergency unit under construction in Gwagwalada, Abuja, which should be ready by April.

“In the meantime, we are using a brand new Intensive Care Unit (ICU) there which has been equipped and has everything ready but is also going to benefit from the facilities the NCDC is using.

“The equipment at the airport are modern, they are passive scanners that you don‘t even know your temperature is being taken when you walk past them, there is a camera facing you. There is someone observing the screen and if you happen to have a high temperature you will see some one step in front of you and invite you politely for a secondary screening.

“Some people walk past the scanner without knowing their temperature was taken because they are used to the pistol type of scanner that is pointed at the forehead to take temperature. It is still in use in some other countries but in reality you are being passively screened and your temperature if it’s abnormal will be picked up immediately. That is for international arrivals.

„Any other equipment we may need will be listed by NCDC and will be procured,“ he assured Nigerians.

The minister also urged the citizens to focus on the facts and not on fear, adding that they should not generate panic.

He further cautioned against the abuse of the social media and spreading of misinformation to cause fear and panic among the people.

On Plateau State incident, Ehanire disclosed that the state government reported four suspected cases among Chinese nationals on 29th February. He clarified that none of them had any symptoms, noting that they had been tested at the NCDC reference laboratory and were all negative of coronavirus infection.

According to him, the state had placed them under supervised self-isolation for 14 days.

“As at 1st March 2020, there have been a total of 87,137 confirmed cases, 95 per cent are inside China, 2,977 deaths across 59 countries which are affected. There are three countries affected in Africa; Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria. There is ongoing community transmission mainly in five countries: China, Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran,“ Ehanire said.

The minister reiterated the need for the people to regularly and thoroughly wash their hands with soap or use alcohol-based sanitisers, respiratory hygiene and to keep a distance with anyone coughing or sneezing.

Ehanire said that the doctors handling the index case said he was stable and that his condition appeared to be a mild one.

He continued: „Scientific evidence we are seeing now is that not all coronavirus infections run the same way; some runs without infections, there are others who are infected and you see a slight headache, cough or fever, and there are others who fall critically ill.

“It is knowledge that is still being gathered but the present assumption is that even the majority of people infected with coronavirus do not have symptoms or have only mild symptoms in such a way that probably you don‘t diagnose it.“

On funding, he said that the „federal government has provided the money requested; so there is no financial problem. The NCDC has begun the processes of procurement to meet the needs that are arising due to this particular disease that has entered the country and also to fill gaps of what it projects to be the need.”

On the taxi driver who picked the infected Italian from the Lagos Airport, the minister said that he had been identified and placed under supervision.

“He is going to be monitored in the next 14 days as well all the 19 people in Lagos and 39 others in Ogun State who had contact with him.

“They are all in self-isolation at their homes. The airline that brought him has been notified of the patient and has been advised to put their crew also under observation,“ he said.

Receives potential COVID-19 vaccine from Prof Iwu

Meanwhile, a professor of pharmacognosy and former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Maurice iwu, has claimed discovery of a drug with a potential treatment agent for coronavirus.

Iwu disclosed this in Abuja, yesterday, when he briefed the minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, in his office on the possible vaccine.

The minister of State for Health, Dr. Adeleke Mamora and the minister of State for Science and Technology, Barrister Mohammed Abdullahi, attended the briefing.

Iwu hinted that his outfit, the Bio-resources Institute of Nigeria (BION) had concluded arrangements with the Anti-viral programme of the United States (US) National Institute of Health to subject compounds from Nigerian plants against the Wuhan coronavirus.

He said that the research group identified and patented a possible treatment for coronavirus as far back as 2015, adding the world must remain ahead of these emergent infections through research.

Iwu said: “Our approach is the use of a network of eminent scientists and leading laboratories to target particular diseases, especially neglected tropical, emergent diseases and orphan diseases such as Ebola virus, Dengue Fever etc.”

In his response, Onu commended him for thediscovery and described it as a welcome development, adding that no single Nigerian life should be lost to the COVID 19. He also praised the efforts of the Federal Ministry of Health since the outbreak of the first case in Nigeria.

The minister added that Nigerians were now more assured and encouraged with the fast recovery of the index patient.

Onu further told Prof. Iwu that the ministry had set up a committee under the aegis of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences to look into cases of vaccines or cure for COVID-19 and Lassa fever.

He, therefore, advised Iwu to make available his research to the committee for verification.

The minister of State for Health, Senator Adeleke Mamora thanked Iwu for coming up with his discovery, adding that Nigeria can only develop through the efforts of its citizens. He said that the best time for war is now and Nigeria must be well prepared.

He emphasised the need for Nigeria to prepare for endemic diseases in times of normalcy and urged them to guard against indiscriminate use of drugs to fight prevalent diseases.

In a statement issued by ministry’s head of Press and Public Relations, Abdulganiyu Aminu,the minister said that he would collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology to up with innovations for national development.

Two More Foreigners Test Negative, 100 Contacts Traced

In Lagos State, the governor and chief incident commander, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has disclosed that two more foreign nationals suspected to be infected with COVID-19 from a high-risk country in Asia had tested negative, just as his Ekiti State counterpart, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, inaugurated a 40-man task force on the disease.

Sanwo-Olu said that series of medical examinations at the state’s bio-security facility conducted on the two foreigners, who were brought from Ogun State last weekend, did not show any sign of COVID-19 infection.

The governor told an advocacy meeting at the Banquet Hall in State House, Alausa, attended by all the 57 council chairmen, community health officers, representatives of Community Development Associations (CDAs) and Community Development Councils (CDCs), All Progressives Congress (APC) members led by the state chairman, Alhaji Tunde Balogun, that the condition of the Italian national who tested positive to the virus last Friday was improving.

He said that the Incident Command Centre was satisfied with recovery of the infected patient.

Sanwo-Olu said that the meeting with the stakeholders was to engage them in propagating accurate information on the virus at the grassroots and also to cascade down communication on how to prevent the human-to-human transmission in case of potential outbreak.

He said: “We have called for this meeting as part of proactive measures we are taking to prevent the spread of coronavirus to our local communities. It is no more news that we are managing a case in Lagos, but the situation does not call for panic. One of the lessons we learnt during the outbreak of Ebola virus six years ago was that, the grassroots was adequately sensitised and prepared.

“We are bringing the lesson back in this period when we are dealing with another highly contagious virus. We don’t want to record any loss of life to this virus. My administration places value on human life, which is the reason we have upgraded facilities at our bio-security centre and Infectious Disease Hospital to stop the spread of the virus. But, we believe we will achieve better results in this effort if the people at the grassroots are properly sensitised on how to protect their communities from the virus and other contagious diseases,” he said.

Giving updates on the case being managed, the commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said that the government had intensified its search for all the persons that had interaction with the isolated patient.

He said: “There were 159 passengers in the aircraft and six people that came in contact with him at the airport. There are 25 people who came in contact with him at the factory; there were two drivers and an ambulance driver. We have quarantined those identified so far at our medical facilities and some of them at home. We are calling them twice a day to check if they are okay. If they develop symptoms, we will bring them to our bio-security facility for test.

“We have identified all of these people except some of those on the aircraft who have either gone back to Europe and other states. Some of them gave us false information on the phone. We are still trying to find the remaining passengers on that aircraft every day. Our contact list is over 100 persons and this number is increasing every day,” he said.

Fayemi, who inaugurated the task force on COVID-19, popularly known, said that the move became necessary following last week’s record of the first case of the viral infection in the country.

The governor said that the task force led by him had representatives from various sectors to workout modalities on how to prevent the spread of the virus and treat possible cases in the state.

The governor revealed that the state had created an isolation centre for quarantine or treatment if necessary in line with the NCDC directive.

S’Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, Senegal record first cases

More countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia and Senegalyesterday recorded first cases of the novel coronavirus. They are the latest Arab countries to see an outbreak of the potentially deadly disease.

Jordan and Tunisia reported that those who had tested positive for the coronavirus had entered their shores via Italy, the country in Europe with the highest number of cases of the disease.

Saudi Arabia announced that its case was a national who had arrived in the kingdom from Iran via Bahrain.

Jordan‘s health minister Saad Jaber told a press conference that the citizen had entered the kingdom from Italy with his family two weeks ago and had tested positive for the disease.

The Jordanian is being kept in an isolation ward while a second suspected case is also being investigated.

Jaber said that if the kingdom records 20 cases of coronavirus then all schools will be closes and public gatherings banned.

Tunisia‘s ministry of health also reported its first case yesterday, saying that the patient came from Italy.

Senegal has become the second country in sub-Saharan Africa to record a coronavirus case, health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr said yesterday at a press conference in the capital, Dakar.

Meanwhile, Lebanon has diagnosed 13 people with the disease, while Algeria, Qatar and Egypt reported new cases last weekend.

Iran has been the epicentre of coronavirus in the Middle East region, with most of the cases in neighbouring Arab countries originating from there.

The UK, France and Germany announced on Monday it was providing a five million Euro package to help Iran combat the disease. At least 66 people have died from the new coronavirus in Iran with more than 1,000 cases confirmed.

Iran supreme leader’s aide dies of disease

An adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died after contracting the novel coronavirus, state radio said on Monday.

Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71, was a member of the Expediency Council that advises Khamenei. He is the latest Iranian official to contract the virus.

One of the country’s top clerics, Hadi Khosroshahi, died last Thursday after he contracted the sickness.

Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar and Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi, who was heading the government’s task force on coronavirus, have also fallen ill, according to state media. (Leadership)