The chances of Nigeria avoiding another occurrence of coronavirus disease in the country has increased as her neighbouring countries, Togo and Cameroon have both recorded their first cases of coronavirus on Friday, March 6, 2020.
The scare of higher risk of coronavirus in Nigeria may be due to the fact that the surveillance of Nigerian authorities against coronavirus on land border is relatively low as against surveillance at airports.
Cameroon shares a boundary with Nigeria, while Togo shares a boundary with Benin-Republic which shares boundary with Nigeria.
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The PUNCH gathered from an official of the Nigerian Customs Service and reported on Sunday “that the surveillance at the borders was very low unlike in 2014 when the Ebola Virus Disease hit Sub-Saharan Africa”.
The official said;
“Port health officials are stationed at the borders but as of now, they are not active.”
Meanwhile, the federal government has disclosed that there have been challenges in tracking the 93 passengers that boarded the same Turkish Airline with an Italian, the country’s Coronavirus index case.
The government said out of the 148 passengers that boarded the Turkish airline with the Italian to Lagos state on Monday, February, 24 only 55 of them had been tracked so far.
Minister of Health,Osagie Ehanire, who made this known in Abuja said: “The contacts of the index case are currently under supervised self-isolation and the states have provided them with temperature monitoring tools. Of the l48 passengers on the manifest of the index case flight, 55 are actively being followed up.