By There is current apprehension amongst Nigerians that hundreds of Chinese who left Nigeria for China to celebrate their annual festival –Lunar New Year, may return any moment from now and bring the deadly coronavirus.
At the moment over 300,000 Chinese are already infected with coronavirus.
Nigerians are calling on the Federal Government to take serious precautions and preventive actions before an avoidable epidemic is brought into the country.
The deadly disease which broke out in the Asian nation sometime last month, has spread to eight countries including United States and Singapore with over 800 people infected and 30 killed in the past few weeks.
The known symptoms of coronavirus are fever, sneezing, difficulty in breathing and high temperature.
China according to reports, went into lockdown on Friday after authorities and business owners scrambled to shut tourist attractions and public transport systems as part of efforts to stop the spread of deadly coronavirus.
Cases of the disease have been reported in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States as well as in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau.
” My worry is that Monkeypox is also a problem in !Nigeria. As of last month, we had 282 cases with nine confirmed death. Lagos State is even having the highest number about 30percent. So my fear now is that on daily basis we have Chinese coming into our our country. Coronavirus broke out in December and people have been coming in. Some of them might have visited the cities where the virus is (in China) and they are already in Nigeria . The scanners at the airport cannot capture them during the window period. The window period is about 10days. During this period, our scanners may not detect any infected person because the symptoms are not there yet.
Abass Latifat
