NCDC DG reacts after Kogi state government dismissed two reported cases of COVID19 in the state
The DG of NCDC, Chikwe
Ihekweazu has just responded to the claims of the Kogi state government that
the two cases reported by NCDC on the 27th of May were false.
The report of the NCDC had
reported that Kogi state which has never recorded any case of COVID-19 has
recorded 2 new cases. The Kogi state commissioner of Health, Saka Haruna-Audu earlier
today in a statement dismissed the results of the NCDC noting that the state
has conducted hundreds of test for COVID-19 but all this test results came back
negative.
Haruna-Audu also noted that
the state will not accept any pressures from anyone to accept any fictitious
results as the government of the state will only accept test results from the
tests conducted by the state’s ministry of health.
He also mentioned that the
cases which NCDC had recorded was false as the two persons were not from Kogi
state.
However during the daily Presidential Task Force press briefing on
COVID-19 situation in the Nation in Abuja the NCDC DG rejected the claims of
the Kogi state government, he noted that there has been no confusion anywhere
as the reference address given by the patient’s shows that they are from Kogi
state.
His statement reads:
''There is actually no dilemma in the two cases. They followed absolutely normal practice. The patient that was referred from the Federal Medical Center to the National Hospital. This is a normal referral pathway when you have a case. They physicians in the National Hospital suspected COVID19 from the clinical symptoms of the patient, asked for a test, it came out positive. The individual lives in Kogi state.”
“Your public health response is based on where you live because that is where your contacts are so this is not controversial in anyway. Standard practice was followed. Once the results came out, the state epidemiologist was informed that he has to do contact tracing around this patient. It is the state's responsibility to do that contact tracing. So we hope they do it.''
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