The Nigeria Immigration Service and Port Health Services have expressed fears over the outbreak of Coronavirus in China. The Punch reports that 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.
Immigration and Port Health Services officials said hundreds of the Chinese who left Nigeria for China to celebrate their annual festival – Lunar New Year – would start returning to Lagos, Abuja and other parts of the country from next week, heightening fears that the virus could be imported to the country by the returnees.
Some officials of Port Health Services, a unit under the Ministry of Health, were quoted as saying the risk of importing the virus into Nigeria could not be completely ruled out since there was a window period of 10 days during which infected persons might not manifest any of the known symptoms of Coronavirus.
According to them, the thermal scanners installed at the airports are expected to alert them whenever any passenger with body heat exceeding 37 degrees passes under it.
The known symptoms of Coronavirus are fever, sneezing, difficulty in breathing and high temperature.
Although inbound passengers are physically monitored for any of these signs, Port Health Services officials said the virus incubation period might not make a carrier to manifest any of these signs, hence the possibility of missing out on some passengers.
A top official of the PHS said, “You know the way we do things in Nigeria, our own approach is always ‘fire brigade’. What we have here are what we were supplied during Ebola crisis by international donor agencies.
“My worry is that Monkeypox is also a problem in Nigeria. As of last month, we had 182 cases with nine confirmed death. Lagos State is even having the highest number with about 30 per cent. So my fear now is that on a daily basis we have Chinese coming into our country.
"Coronavirus broke out in December and people have been coming in. Some of them might have visited the cities where this virus is (in China) and they are already here in Nigeria. The scanners at the airports cannot capture them during the window period. The window period is about 10 days. During this period, our scanners may not detect any infected person because the symptoms are not there yet.”
