Lafia
With COVID-19 cases in Nigeria on the decline and many states ready to re-open their educational institutions for academic activities, Nasarawa State Government says it is set to begin the testing of its Civil Servants for COVID-19 to further check the spread of the deadly virus.
The Reporters,an online publication, recalls that the novel virus was first reported in Wuhan in China on December 31,2019 while Nigeria recorded its report of the virus on February 27,2020.
Dr Ibrahim Adamu, Director, Public Health in the state Ministry of Health, disclosed the preparedness of the state government in an interview with newsmen on Thursday in Lafia.
Adamu,who expressed the commitment of the state government to ensure the containment of the pandemic in the state, added that all the staff in the department of public health, directly involved in the fight against the pandemic, had been tested for the virus.
“Our strategy now is that, every civil servant in the state should have the opportunity of being tested and that is what we want to do, going forward,” he said.
He said that conscious efforts were on, interns modality,to work out how sample collection from civil servants in the various ministries would be done, beginning from next week.
The director said though samples from the state were being taken to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reference laboratory in Abuja, the trend would change in no distant future.
To actualise this, the director said that molecular laboratories were being set up in Lafia and Keffi local government areas.
He revealed that so far, 3,652 persons have been tested for COVID-19 in the state with 443 confirmed cases, 24 results pending 13 fatalities recorded while 66 patients were receiving home care.
