The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has cleared the air on the controversy over the authenticity of the two confirmed COVID-19 cases in Kogi State.
Before Wednesday night, Kogi and Cross River States were yet to get COVID-19 cases.
The agency said the processes of taking samples and testing went through standard procedures.
Speaking during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, in Abuja, Director-General of the NCDC Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu said: “The Minister of Health was in touch with the governor of Kogi State and I think everybody is working very hard to resolve this issue.
“There is actually no dilemma in the two cases because they followed absolutely normal practice. A patient was referred from the Federal Medical Centre to the National Hospital in Abuja; this is a natural referral pathway when you have a case.
“I don’t have any influence over the work that the physicians in the National Hospital do. They suspected COVID-19 based on the clinical symptoms of the patient, asked for a test to be done and it came out positive. The individual lives in Kogi State.
“What we do in public health is that your public health response is based on where you live because that is where your contacts are. So this is not controversial in anyway because standard practice was followed. Once the results came out, the state epidemiologist was informed that he has to do contact tracing around these patients.
“It is the state’s responsibility to do contact tracing. We hope they do it. There is nothing actually controversial in any way about this because it is all standard practice.”
He added: “We are a public service organisation and everything we do is open to the Nigerian people. The last time there were some questions about the patient from Benue state, we were asked to send the sample to the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), and we did and they got exactly the same results as we did. “So there is nothing we hide about the work we do because we are there to serve Nigerians and we will do that to the best of our ability every day of the week.”