The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control says several Nigerians who attempted to beat the airport security network with counterfeit COVID-19 lab certificates were apprehended last week.
In the weekly briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 held in Abuja on Monday, NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu disclosed that the arrest was made possible with the launch of COVID-19 verification platform in the country.
He remarked the arrested travellers were turned back and handed over to security agents for further investigation.
“Concerning the verification platform for test results for travellers, that platform is now live. Last week, many intending travellers were turned back and handed over to security agencies because they were trying to travel with fake lab results.
Ihekweazu expressed concerns that, sometimes, the results are procured by agents who pose as lab officials.
He, therefore, urged Nigerians to take responsibility for their COVID-19 test results by getting tested in accredited laboratories across the country.
“But to be honest, everyone has to take responsibility for the test results in your hands.
“We advise everyone travelling to spare themselves the inconvenience and embarrassment by doing the test in one of the accredited labs, which you can find on our website.
“Before you travel, please check the destination country’s requirements. If it includes a PCR negative test, do this in any of the accredited labs and you will get a result that is verifiable through any of the airlines,” he said.
The NCDC boss also announced that the number of COVID-19 cases have continued to decline across the country since January 25.
It, however, stressed that it will continue to scale up testing, risk communication and all the other response activities.
He said: “In Nigeria, COVID-19 cases have continued to decline. However, our response activities continue. We have seen a decline in the number of cases now across eight consecutive weeks. However, we are still scaling testing, pushing hard on risk communication, and all the other activities. We will continue to do so every single day and every week over the next few months.
“We have been working with many states to roll out rapid diagnostic test kits and we are happy with the progress being made. We urge all Nigerians to continue to adhere to the public health measures in order to maintain the gains that we have made.
“Concerning the verification platform for test results for travellers, that platform is now live. Last week, many intending travellers were turned back and handed over to security agencies because they were trying to travel with fake lab results. Sometimes, these results were procured by agents, but to be honest, everyone has to take responsibility for the test results in your hands.
“We advise everyone travelling to spare themselves the inconvenience and embarrassment by doing the test in one of the accredited labs, which you can find on our website. Before you travel, please check the destination country’s requirements. If it includes a PCR negative test, do this in any of the accredited labs and you will get a result that is verifiable through any of the airlines.”
Concerning the strange infections in Kano State, Ihekweazu said: “We are also responding to an incident in Kano State, where they have been a cluster of cases of undefined illness. Most cases have had fever, jaundice and some abdominal pain. We have ruled out the more common causes of these from an infectious disease point of view – yellow fever, Lassa.
“Now, we are looking at a few other options of what has been causing these, but we have a team in Kano right now working with colleagues in the Federal Ministry, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and a few other agencies working together to get to the bottom of that particular cluster.
“The respiratory infection that has killed the most number of people till date is a disease that we all know called tuberculosis (TB). The 24th of March is the World Tuberculosis Day, a day to raise awareness on this important disease that continues to affect millions of Nigerians, but a disease that many of us do not think as important anymore.
“We must continue to focus on prevention, early detection, and response to this disease. We have been working very closely with the National TB programme in strengthening TB surveillance and to make sure that we build on some of the human resources and investments that were made in COVID-19 to support TB. Also, realise that all the GeneXpert machines that we have been using for COVID-19 actually came from the TB programme and our challenge as a country is to make sure that all these resources work across board to support our infectious disease response all together.”
