The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, on Monday confirmed a second case of coronavirus in the country.
The Federal Government moved to stop the spread of the disease as President Muhammadu Buhari has set up a 12-man Presidential Task Force for the Control of Coronavirus-19.
The killer virus was brought into Nigeria by an Italian who arrived in Lagos on February 24 from Milan on a Turkish Airlines flight.
Addressing a press conference at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin, Ehanire said “the new contact is a victim who had contact with the Italian who imported it to Nigeria”.
He said 40 people in Ogun State and 20 others in Lagos who had contact with the Italian had been quarantined.
The minister said the Federal Government had so far committed about N1bn to monitoring and preventing the spread of the disease.
Osagie said, “Contact tracing and monitoring in respect of the coronavirus index case presently receiving treatment in Lagos have been diligently and conscientiously pursued since the February 27 when the case was first diagnosed.
“Forty persons in Ogun and 20 in Lagos are under isolation and have remained free of any symptoms since then.
“Nevertheless, the Ministry of Health, following best practices, decided to test these persons for the possible presence of coronavirus in their systems. On March 8, scientists confirmed the presence of coronavirus in one of the contacts.
“It is my duty therefore to announce the new case of coronavirus disease in Nigeria and the newly confirmed case is an Ogun State contact of the index case, but he has no significant clinical symptoms.
“This brings the number of Covid-19 cases in Nigeria today to two.”
Osagie said a team of researchers from institutions in the country led by scientists from the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Lagos, had successfully perform “the genome sequencing of the coronavirus strain that the index case brought to Nigeria sometime ago and the scientists proved it to match with the coronavirus circulating in Italy and Wuhan, China.
“It is the first time this sequencing virus has been performed in Africa; the result has been shared with international authorities in China and the Director General of the WHO has extended congratulations to Nigerian scientists for this achievement.”
The presidential task force is chaired by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha.
A State House statement by Buhari’s media aide, Garba Shehu, announced the appointment on Monday.
Shehu said, “Given the current global outbreak of the novel Coronavirus and its potential of causing significant disruption to health services in the country as well as impacting negatively on the economy, President Muhammadu Buhari has established a Presidential Task Force for the Control of the Coronavirus-19 Disease.
“This action is in preparation for the unlikely but probable major outbreak of the disease in the country which will require a multi-sectoral inter-governmental approach as advised by the World Health Organisation similar to that adopted for the HIV epidemic in the last two decades.”
The committee has a mandate of six months to deliver on the assignment.
The National Coordinator of the committee is Dr Sani Aliyu.
Other members are Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola; Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika; Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Services, Sadiya Umar-Farouk; Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu; Minister of Environment, Mohammed Mahmoud; Director General, Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi; Director General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control; Chikwe Ihekweazu; and World Health Organisation Country Representative.
