Nigeria’s Health Ministry on Friday reported the country’s first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, the deadly virus that is rapidly spreading worldwide, reported Reuters.
The Health Ministry said on Twitter that the case was reported in the state of Lagos, the biggest city in Africa’s most populous country which has a population of about 20 million.
“The case…is the first case to be reported in Nigeria since the beginning of the outbreak in China in January,” the health ministry said in its post.
Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said the presence of coronavirus has been confirmed in an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and returned from Milan, Italy to Lagos on Feb. 25. He said that the infection was confirmed after a medical diagnosis of the patient at the Virology Laboratory of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
“The patient is clinically stable, with no serious symptoms,” said the minister.
Ehanire said the infected person was being treated at a hospital in the Lagos district of Yaba. He added that the authorities are now identifying all the contacts of the patient since he entered Nigeria.
The minister said the authorities have been taking immediate measures to ensure an outbreak in Nigeria is controlled and contained quickly.
Nigeria has become the third African country to have a confirmed case of coronavirus aside Egypt and Algeria and first in West Africa.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization has warned that the health systems of African countries were ill-equipped to respond to the deadly coronavirus outbreak should cases start to proliferate on the continent.
Currently, there is no cure for the coronavirus that has now spread to more than 30 other countries, including China, the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, France, and Russia. The virus has so far caused nearly 80,000 infections and almost 2,800 deaths in China where it first began.
